LA's Reviews > The Orphan Master's Son

UPDATE... On sale for $1.99 today! This tale has a pervasively ominous tone and doesn't have a story book ending. If you're a casual reader who's in it just for enjoyment, skip it - unless you find the whole idea of what goes on in North Korea rather fascinating. This is fictional, but the details are based on real accounts from survivors and escapees. Blew my doors off.
---------------
This novel was mesmerizing to me, like a nightmare that is so bizarre that, despite its ugliness, you don't want to wake up from for fear of missing how it will end. As dark and surreal as North Korea itself, this fascinating, compelling, 5 star read is not for wussies.

The dreamlike story centers around a young man who was reared in an orphanage but who prided himself upon the fact that he was not, in fact, without parents. His father was in charge of the unit - he was the Orphan Master. His mother was one of the women "taken" by the Great Leader years prior, but he accepts this with no qualms. Nobody is allowed qualms here.

If you've read at all about the reign of Kim Jong Il or Kim Il Sung before him, you may recall that exceptionally beautiful and talented people from other areas of Asia were occasionally snatched by the North Korean government. Caught like beautiful canaries, film makers and opera singers truly were kept captive there.

As our hero Jun Do (get it, JOHN DOE?) finds his way in the world - or rather, is assigned to his way in the world - we see him move from the armed services where he is valued for his taekwondo skills and then onto a boat off the coast to act as a signal operator. As his responsibilities change, we are privy to inside views of the military that seem too bizarre to be a straight-up work of fiction...the reader might think that maybe a touch of magical realism is weaved in to the tale, but then again, perhaps not. The true testimonies of survivors of the DPRK are so bizarre in themselves that in certain sections, it is nearly impossible to disentangle reality from Johnson's imagination.

About midway through the story, there is a darkly comic diplomatic trip taken by representatives of Kim Jong Il (which includes Jun Do) to a ranch in the US. When this trip does not go as planned, our guy ends up in prison...and wow! What we see here through his eyes!

Johnson did extensive research with those who escaped, defected, and lived to tell the tale, so the torture he writes may or may not be a dark confection he has whipped up. What follows after is even more bizarre.

Jun Do is assigned a new identity. While you or I may find this piece too absurd to roll with (I initially did), it rolls over the reader like CRAZY magical realism that some audiences are fine with. I came to realize...this kind of stuff happens over there! Consider, Kim Jong-Un had his big brother assassinated by two random chicks, one in an LOL t-shirt, and both using poison goo. Does that not sound like ridiculous fiction? And that’s the fantastical stuff we *know* of - survivors tell us way weirder stories.

So to the critical point where author Johnson COULD have alienated me. A parallel? SEMI SPOILER: Let's say that President Obama strongly disapproved of Hilary Clinton's performance on something, and I happened to be some low level government employee he'd noticed. Within a day, I would have been moved into her home, expected to eat breakfast with Bill, and Chelsea would be calling me Mom. Every single person in the country - obviously knowing that I'm not Hilary Clinton - would address me as if I were her. Honey, if the Great Leader comments on the violet hue of an orange, by golly, you'd better start praising the purple color of citrus. END SEMI SPOILER

“Where we are from, stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.”

The new identity involves darkly farcical actions, but within them, Jun Do finally finds love. Although he has delivered his own share of brutality to others, he risks himself to give that love a small chance at freedom. Oh, that the people of North Korea could see love fly free.

Phenomenal book.