Today is the official release to of what I believe to be one of the best books of the year, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson.  (Yes, I know it is January 10th!) To add to the excitement, Adam Johnson will be at Lemuria for a signing and reading on Friday, January 27th. The Orphan Master’s Son is also our January First Editions Club pick.

The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in one of the most isolated countries on Earth, North Korea. Adam Johnson began studying North Korea during the George W. Bush Iraq War era when he became interested in the art of political propaganda. The national narrative constructed by Kim Jong Il and his administration led to many questions for Johnson which he detailed in an interview with Richard Powers: “What did it mean when people became characters in the story of a corrupt state? What happened to their own identities and motivations? Under what circumstances would a person risk sharing a personal thought?”

When asked about what North Koreans think about all of the propaganda, Adam Johnson could only comment on his suspicion as he was not allowed to actually speak to any of the North Korean citizens: “My suspicion is that people in North Korea know that everything is a lie, but that they have no idea what the truth is.” (see full interview with Electric Literature)

All of these questions and research led to a published short story but with Johnson understanding the need to travel to North Korea if he were going to expand his story. The opportunity came and Johnson describes the situation:

“I toured four cities on my visit and was monitored by three minders, one of whom video-taped much of what was said, for the purposes of a ‘tourist DVD.’ There was also a director who appeared on occasion to mind the minders . . . Upon arriving I was struck by the quiet of Pyongyang–there were no planes in the sky, no cars on the road, no cell phone conversations, almost no conversations at all, just thousands of people, all dressed similarly, walking briskly from one task to another. I saw no advertisements, no graffiti, no litter, no bicycles, no stoplights, no hint of leisure. This was a land without fashion, irony, magazines, music, pets, art, or spontaneity of any kind. The streets were empty, the buildings dark, the escalators eerily still.” (Interview with Richard Powers)

On top of a real world that we will find unbelievable, Johnson tells us the fictional story of Pak Jun Do, the son of an orphan master in Pyongyang. Since his mother, a beauty of voice and appearance, was stolen to Pyongyang, his father felt that being an orphan master would allow him to hold tight to his son. Jun Do finds himself to be just another orphan among orphans, often blamed when anything goes wrong. Finally, as the famine comes and progresses to an unimaginable point, Jun Do’s father stops a “crow”, a Soviet military truck, to take the remaining twelve boys from the orphanage.

At the age of fourteen Jun Do leaves his father to be trained as a tunnel soldier in the art of zero-light combat. Because of his skills for working in complete darkness, he is eventually recruited to pluck Japanese right off their coastline at night. As the reader learns more and more about Pak Jun Do, it is clear that he can do whatever he sets his mind to, even in the awful circumstances of North Korea. At what seems opportunity and necessity, Jun Do finds a way to assume the military and personal life of Commander Ga, a top general to Kim Jong Il. From here, the cast of characters expands and deepens from American diplomats to the recently departed Kim Jong Il.

Open up The Orphan Master’s Son and read. The loudspeakers are calling!

“Citizens! The time to be excited about Adam Johnson’s forthcoming novel is approaching. Remember to keep the beautiful spirit of unity in your heart and steel yourself for this day! Remember to remind your neighbor! Say to your neighbor, what are you supposed to remember to remind me about today? He should say to you: THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON!” (The Outlet, The Blog of Electric Literature)

Read more about The Orphan Master’s Son:

24 Million Secondary Characters: A Q&A with Adam Johnson by Publisher’s Weekly

‘Orphan’: A New Novel Imagines Life in North Korea by NPR

An Interview with Adam Johnson by The Outlet, The Blog of Electric Literature, September 2010

The Orphan Master’s Son an audacious, believable tale by The Washington Post

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson is published by Random House with a first printing of 40,000 copies.

Back in early November, John Jeremiah Sullivan stopped by the store to sign and read from his recently published Pulphead: Essays. I had received an email from my mother  earlier that day saying please snag her a copy to be signed at the event because she had worked with Mr. Sullivan at the Oxford American when the magazine was still actually based out of Oxford, Mississippi. As I thumbed through the essays before the event, I knew I would be buying two copies of the book – one for my mom and one for myself.

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Mr. Sullivan covers a range of topics, including his time living with an elderly southern author at the University of the South, coverage of a Christian Rock festival and time spent at a shelter on the Gulf Coast immediately following Hurricane Katrina – all of which are thoroughly researched and well-written, making them very much worth reading.

This recent review of Pulphead, which appeared in The New Yorker in December compares Mr. Sullivan to Tom Wolfe or David Foster Wallace, noting that “he is kinder than the former, and less neurotic than the latter.”

So, if you are a fan of the essay, or maybe just want to read some well-researched, insightful writing on various topics, give Pulphead: Essays a try.

The Art of Fielding — I’m not sure if it matched the hype, but it’s still awfully good. Can’t wait to see what Harbach does next.
Popular Crime — I’ll read just about anything Bill James writes. I blogged about this book previously.
It’s All About the Bike — Might be for bike nerds only, but oh, what a book for bike nerds.

The Extra 2% — Moneyball comparisons are unfair; this is a different book, and a very good one.

Three and Out — I don’t know why picking through the ugly details of the last 3 years of Michigan football is so enjoyable, but it is.
The Affair — I don’t read a lot of mysteries or thrillers, but there are a handful of authors on my “must-read” list. Lee Child is one…

Agent 6 is the conclusion to Tom Rob Smith’s trilogy about Leo Demidov, my favorite officer of the KGB.  I have been waiting tirelessly for this book to come out having read Child 44 (2008) and The Secret Speech (2009) and absolutely loving them both.  I am actually very sad that we will not be hearing anything more from Leo but Smith does a fantastic job of wrapping the series up and not leaving us with any questions.

At the beginning of Agent 6 we are taken back in time to 1950 where we learn how Leo and his wife, Raisa met and learn about Jesse Austin, an American singer and member of the Communist party and his role in Leo and Raisa getting together.  We soon are back where The Secret Speech left off and Leo has left the secret police and is concentrating on his family. Raisa, Zoya and Elena are about to travel to New York City for the “Peace Tour”, which both countries are hoping will ease relations between the two.  Leo is not allowed to travel with them and is immediately suspicious of the real reason behind the trip and why his wife and daughters were invited.  Of course, something happens on the trip and Leo’s reaction to this tragedy is to enact revenge on the person at fault.

I am stopping there because anymore and I will spoil the thrill of the story!  I will say that I am glad that this is my first read of 2012 and I hope that the rest can live up to Agent 6!

Dear Listener,

It took me nearly two months to finish The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst.  Although I read several books while “reading” The Stranger’s Child, and was a little tied down with work (Christmas season in the retail business? Sheesh!), it was the tediousness of the book that kept pushing me away.  When asked to describe it, my most frequently used words were “dry”, “British”, and “incredibly dry and British.”  Frankly, my words could have been harsher.  After Christmas ended, I decided it was time to finish this jerk-of-a-book so I could finally return to reading the books that had been stacking up without the guilt of denying an ending to the one I had started.  Then something astonishing happened.  

It is extremely rare for me to leave a book unfinished once I have started it.  Occasionally this is something I find rueful (i.e. Infinite Jest), but for the most part I would rather have an ending that I hate than hating a book that I haven’t finished.  The Stranger’s Child was not a book that I hated, but I might had I not finished it.  It is not as if the ending is necessarily even the payoff, but it helps the reader understand that the book is not as much based around the importance of a plot as it is around a group of ideas: sexuality, aging, memory, and fact.  When the stage was finally set, and the point was made, the book was done and I was happy.

With that said, I had less difficulty dealing with the book as an American than I did as a heterosexual.  In her review for The Guardian, Emma Brockes wrote, “in different hands [The Stranger’s Child] might be called ‘Gay Men and the Women Who Marry Them’.”  I like to think of myself as an understanding person, and it is not something that really even necessarily bothers me, but it simply creates a plot that is less relatable to me.  I suppose it wasn’t the plot that I focused on in the end anyway.

Here’s a video for the British band Yuck.  They are signed to the slightly local Fat Possum Records.  Much like The Stranger’s Child, Yuck’s self titled album has landed on many best-of 2011 lists.

by Simon