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The Orphan Master's Son

Adam Johnson

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last updated Jun 05, 2016 04:48PM

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What Members Thought

Mar 25, 2012 Jeff Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, own, audiobooks, korean-fiction

Heavy research combined with a creative narrative drive this unusual love story. It seems timely this book has come out with so much discussion over North Korea. A new leader, long range missiles, nuclear options all saber rattling, so it seems important to know more about the country. Adam Johnson has done an amazing job capturing what it is like to live in North Korea. Some of the scenarios described seem too incredible to be real, making 1984 seem like a vacation. What’s really interesting is ...more

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Dec 13, 2013 Jane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recentfiction

I wouldn't have stuck with this book if it hadn't been for the discussion. It was so difficult to read...the main character's life is so brutal. The questions the book raises about freedom, love, identity and choice are what carried me through. I think reading the discussion carried me as well. The fact that both the narrator and the chronology shift was challenging for me as a reader. Jun Do is the protagonist, the orphan master's son, and is life is unspeakably awful from the very beginning. H I wouldn't have stuck with this book if it hadn't been for the discussion. It was so difficult to read...the main character's life is so brutal. The questions the book raises about freedom, love, identity and choice are what carried me through. I think reading the discussion carried me as well. The fact that both the narrator and the chronology shift was challenging for me as a reader. Jun Do is the protagonist, the orphan master's son, and is life is unspeakably awful from the very beginning. He adapts, as people, especially children, do. In fact, when he travels to Texas on a "diplomatic" mission for North Korea, he talks with an American woman about the United States and the idea of freedom.
Are there labor camps here?
No.
Mandatory marriages, forced criticism sessions, loud speakers?
She shook her head.
Then I'm not sure I could ever feel free here.
When you're in my country, he said, everything makes simple, clear sense. It's the most straightforward place on earth.

How to make her understand that the scorch water they made from the rice burned to the bottom of the pot tasted better than any Texas lemonade.
How to explain his country to her he wondered. How to explain that leaving its confines to said upon the sea of Japan--that was being free.

Taking on freedom and identity and love in such a totalitarian country and juxtaposing it with the subtleties of freedom and lack of freedom in the United States is so interesting to me...and the the idea of how we create stories about ourselves and what our lives mean...about relationships and how we understand and express love...about how we communicate and represent or hide that love...such an ambitious undertaking. While this book wasn't pleasant to read, it often took my breath away. It was amazing. I couldn't have said I "Like it" or "Really like it," that would be equivalent to "liking" a facebook message about the death of a loved one. But I'm glad I stuck it out and read it. Thanks to the Constant Reader discussion. ...more

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Aug 23, 2017 Gina rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, book-group, pulitzer

Once I started to embrace what I wasn't getting in this dense and complicated book, it got better. Sad, funny, strange and confusing, this fictious story in North Korean is frightening if conditions are close to truth. The story itself is ridiculously implausible but nonetheless enjoyable and thought provoking. ...more

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Dec 20, 2016 Jill Wolfe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A dark but compelling read

Excellent writing, though the violent content was often hard to read. Push through, though, because the ending is so, so good. Occasionally funny, mostly sad, this is a book for those who want a very different take on heroism.

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Dec 22, 2017 Anastasia rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2018, book-club

So far, hating this random and uninteresting book just as much as I did the first time I tried reading it (abandoned it); but it's for my book club, so I have to stick with it. ...more

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