The Orphan Master's Son (2012)

Book Info

Author

Adam Johnson

Genre

Historical Fiction

Rating

4.04 of 5 Votes: 2

Your rating

ISBN

0812992792 (ISBN13: 9780812992793)

Language

English

Publisher

Random House

Shops

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble

Read Online

About book The Orphan Master's Son (2012)

Multiple characters and multiple timelines were sometimes confusing. Story didn't hold my interest. One thing, made me grateful we don't have work camps. But the storyline is okay. The majority of the beginning leads you to believe he'll discover who he is or more about his parents. But no. Skips to a completely different story. There's some closure to that. However, the very ending was lost on me. I was less enamored with this novel as it went on. Yes, I get its larger themes of story-telling and the line between fiction and truth, and there is a side of me that believes the novel's second half, Ga's confessions, is a dream played out while under the auto-pilot. There are times when I like to feel that way when reading - to question, to see the potential for duplicity - and I appreciated the author planting that seed while I read. That said, the book still felt too long, the playfulness of the fiction/truth line was played too much and became burdensome, and the sections from the loudspeaker became tiresome - no doubt as they are to actual North Koreans.