Point of View

Adam Johnson tells the short stories in his collection “Fortune Smiles” in the first and third-person narrative depending on the story. The stories “Nirvana,” “Interesting Facts,” “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine,” and “Dark Meadow” are told in the first-person limited-omniscient narrative mode. The stories “Hurricanes Anonymous” and “Fortune Smiles” are told in the third-person limited-omniscient perspective. The first-person perspective allows the reader a very intimate, very personal understanding of the characters in those respective stories, including Hans, the former prison warden; the narrator of “Dark Meadow," a victim of sexual abuse as a child who has grown up to be sexually attracted to little girls; the breast-cancer survivor in “Interesting Facts”; and the narrator of “Nirvana,” who struggles to avert his wife committing suicide. These stories are the most morally and personally challenging of the collection, so the first-person perspective puts the reader...