The Orphan Master's Son - Or Seemed a Bit Lost but Came Around in the End

I enjoyed The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (here) although at times I thought it needed a bit more polishing. The whole time I was reading it I kept thinking about Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle. Both kind of sweep the reader along in a disparate somewhat chaotic world, and that's exactly what happens in The Orphan Master's Son.



There were times when I thought the story could have been a bit more put together and streamlined. It was a bit rushed, perhaps because they wanted to publish it as soon after Kim Jong Il's death as possible. The story is broken into two distinct parts, the first with Jun Do and his rising through the Army's ranks, the second when he assumes the persona of Commander Ga. There are links between the two, but ostensibly they could have been two different books. That was a tad hard to get used to.

Secondly I loved the propaganda chapters. The second half of the book, the Commander Ga portions, started with propaganda posts followed by chapters with a description of the actual events. They were fun and made the reading more lighthearted. I wonder though just how realistic Johnson's descriptions are, what is his history, what are his bona fides? The life he describes is similar to accounts I have read, but even so I wonder how much artistic license he used. I hope quite a bit if only because the society seems so horrendous. It sure makes me want to read some non-fiction books about North Korea.

I've already highlighted a couple of passages (here), (here) and on Twitter (here), so everyone reading this has probably seen and read all of them.

All in all I'm glad I read it and look forward to more by Johnson.