Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson
Published 2015 · 312 pages · 60,830 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction, Short Fiction
How hard is Fortune Smiles to read?
Fortune Smiles scores 53 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
- Johnson writes in accessible contemporary prose that adapts to each story's setting and situation. Technical vocabulary appears where relevant—programming, cryogenics—but context makes meanings clear.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Sentences are clean and propulsive, with Johnson's style serving dramatic and comic timing. The prose is readable while carrying considerable weight.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- The stories ground abstract themes—technology's impact, totalitarianism's aftermath, grief's persistence—in specific human situations. Ideas emerge through character rather than exposition.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Johnson efficiently establishes each story's world, whether post-Katrina Louisiana, Stasi-haunted Germany, or North Korean defectors in Seoul. You'll absorb considerable context.
- Narrative indirection: 55 out of 100
- Characters' self-understanding often lags behind readers' perception. Johnson shows delusion and hope without editorializing, letting behavior reveal truth.
- Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
- Johnson builds symbolic patterns without heavy-handedness—the digital president, the frozen bodies, the Stasi memories. The stories work literally and figuratively.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Dark humor pervades even devastating material. Johnson finds absurdity in tragedy without diminishing the pain—a difficult balance he maintains throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Individual stories reach various kinds of endings, some more resolved than others. Johnson prefers open questions to false closure.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- Stand-alone stories with different settings and situations. Each story has clear internal structure, with the collection creating meaning through juxtaposition.
How Fortune Smiles is regarded
Fortune Smiles holds a literary regard score of 64 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.