Emporium

Rating:
Summary: Not much to say but. . .
Review: A 15-year-old sniper who falls in love. A family who owns a bulletproof vest shop in a desolate "America." The awakening of a boy who drives a bus of female cancer patients. Canadians trying to reach the moon before the Russians. What do these scenarios have to do with each other? To the naked eye, nothing much, but when one steps into the worlds created by author, Adam Johnson in his short story collection, Emporium, the reader will see that the human experience, the good, the bad, and the ugly, runs rampant in this beautifully written collection.

Emporium is a collection of ten short stories by Johnson, and each story will pull the reader into a surreal world that at first will leave the reader dizzy with tight tension, vivid characters and plot lines that have never been written about before. However, what makes these stories so real and so touching and poignant is that each, despite its wild premise, falls back to the foundation of the human condition. Each story deals with some aspect of the human condition, such as love, yearning, death, loneliness, and belonging, that has the ability to connect the reader to the characters. In essence, pulls them into the story. There isn't a story in this collection that can't touch an emotion in each person that reads it.

As an aspiring novelist, I learned a great deal about how to write tight fiction that speaks in volumes.

Adam Johnson is a writer that will definitely go places, in my opinion, and I look forward to reading future works by him.

Shon Bacon

Rating:
Summary: An eclectic array of stories that reveal the human condition
Review: A 15-year-old sniper who falls in love. A family who owns a bulletproof vest shop in a desolate "America." The awakening of a boy who drives a bus of female cancer patients. Canadians trying to reach the moon before the Russians. What do these scenarios have to do with each other? To the naked eye, nothing much, but when one steps into the worlds created by author, Adam Johnson in his short story collection, Emporium, the reader will see that the human experience, the good, the bad, and the ugly, runs rampant in this beautifully written collection.

Emporium is a collection of ten short stories by Johnson, and each story will pull the reader into a surreal world that at first will leave the reader dizzy with tight tension, vivid characters and plot lines that have never been written about before. However, what makes these stories so real and so touching and poignant is that each, despite its wild premise, falls back to the foundation of the human condition. Each story deals with some aspect of the human condition, such as love, yearning, death, loneliness, and belonging, that has the ability to connect the reader to the characters. In essence, pulls them into the story. There isn't a story in this collection that can't touch an emotion in each person that reads it.

As an aspiring novelist, I learned a great deal about how to write tight fiction that speaks in volumes.

Adam Johnson is a writer that will definitely go places, in my opinion, and I look forward to reading future works by him.

Shon Bacon

Rating:
Summary: amazing collection
Review: Each story is unique and imaginative. Some of the stories are very normal, and some verge on science fiction. He's almost like a Vonnegut with more developed and believable characters. Perhaps that's too bold - but I eagerly look forward to new stuff from him.

Rating:
Summary: teen snipers, death-dealing satellites, and canadanauts
Review: In a year that saw a number of fine short story collections by young writers, Adam Johnson's "Emporium" stands out as one of the best. These stories paint an ironic and, at times, absurd portrait of a completely pathological society. Many of these stories deal with guns, violence, or disease, and stories such as Ã'Teen SniperÃ" and Ã'Trauma PlateÃ" inhabit a cultural landscape in which violence has become pervasive and inescapable. Despite this, JohnsonÃ*s stories are great fun to read; thereÃ*s a keen irony at work that refuses to distance itself from the damaged emotional lives of the characters that inhabit them. TheyÃ*re exaggerated, absurd, and full of black humor, but that very absurdity more often than not lends poignance to the plight of characters whose dilemmas are as ridiculous as they are tragic.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not groundbreaking
Review: In Emporium, Adam Johnson displays his ability to frame sympathetic characters in absurd yet believable settings. He skewers reality enough to interject a sense of vitality into his well-worn themes, but manages to not drop into the abyss of cleverness that would�ve zapped these stories of their life and turned them into self-indulgent exercises of his imagination. The stories: A teenage sniper experiences first love; Another teenager comes to terms with his mother�s death while standing on a peer with a group of hot, female cancer patients who track satellites and drink liquor by the gallon; A family deteriorates while minding a body armor emporium�and so on. Fortunately Mr. Johnson rarely concedes the stories� emotional cores to either their high concepts or to his rather verbose language, which is alternating fresh and distracting. I say rarely because there are a couple of instances where Johnson allows his ideas to overrun the logical boundaries of the stories and end up feeling forced and a tad bit silly; the Canadanaut and Teen Sniper stories are examples of this. But, all in all, a nice collection of stories. I�ll definitely stay tuned for his next effort.

Rating:
Summary: Shows Lots of Promise
Review: Make no mistake, Adam Johnson can write a mean short story, and maybe he will be the "next big thing," but the hype around this collection is perhaps more a reflection of his potential than of the stories themselves. His shtick (and I like it), is to explore very basic and universal themes, such as loneliness, coming of age, love, death, and other such favorites (often though teenage protagonists) in imaginative and slightly surreal, semi-absurd settings.

For example, in the first story we meet a teenage sniper who works for the Palo Alto police, dropping dot-com burnouts on a daily basis. While he does grapple with the issue of empathy, his more pressing concern is fitting in with the older guys and getting a date. The second story is about a night guard at a zoo who is tasked with killing certain animals each night, but the real story is about his attempt to relate to his son, who can't cope with his father no longer being a policeman. In these, and all the stories, Johnson manages to evoke of a lot of sympathy for his characters, as well as humor ranging from dark, to wry, to just plain funny. He's able to create these quirky, yet wholly believable settings (even the snowbound 1960s Canadian space research center), and populate them with characters you want to know more about All of this is accomplished with zero self-indulgence and a high level of prose.

Where the stories tend to falter a bit is the endings-they all end on pretty much the exact same note. Not quite despair, but the tangy hollowness of isolation. This wouldn't be a problem for a novel say, but when all the stories in a collection leave the same taste in the mouth at the end, it gets old. Still, Johnson is definitely a talent to watch for, and these stories do exhibit loads of promise, but they're not as completely stunning as some reviewers might lead you to believe....

Rating:
Summary: Read this collection and track this author!
Review: This collection is imaginative, entertaining, compelling, and refreshing - yes, refreshing. It's unusual to find a writer capable of drawing such imaginative and sometimes outlandish worlds, without losing site of the importance of delivery. These stories are clever in their subject, pace, voice, and imagery. I think that this collection successfully merges literary fiction with "Pop-Culture" in a manner which both the most discriminating literary critic and sensory-overloaded "Generation Y-er" will find compelling. I believe we'll be seeing a lot more from Mr. Johnson... Hollywood, are you paying attention? I suspect Quentin Tarentino is already casting for at least one of these stories. Do yourself a favor and read these stories before they are subjected to the interpretation of Hollywood-types, as I suspect it will be impossible to improve upon these stories. Read this collection now!

Rating:
Summary: Not much to say but. . .
Review: this is a fine debut by a writer we're all going to have to watch closely. Most short story collections have one or two zingers, and the rest of the pieces are so-so or just plain filler. There stories crackle with wit and linguistic energy. Perhaps Mr. Johnson might come off as a bit paranoid--or at least the characters in his stories seem to be--but I'll read another collection as finely written as this in a heartbeat. Bravo.

Rating:
Summary: Believe the Hype!
Review: This is an amazing collection of stories, with characters and situations that are wildly imaginative and testosterone-laden (that goes for the female characters too!). Your Own Backyard is my favorite, a frantic but insightful tale of how a father finds himself trying to connect with his adolescent son, and The Canadanaut, the most bizarre story here, is just plain laugh-out-loud funny. My only reservation is with most of the endings; the author, in attempting to show that there really is no end to the stories of our lives, has a habit of cutting the ending short, which leaves the reader puzzled and frustrated. Still, a minor complaint about the most entertaining and thoughtful prose I've read in a long time. I look forward to more by Mr. Johnson.

Rating:
Summary: amazing collection
Review: This is easily one of the best short story collections I've ever read. "Your Own Backyard" alone is worth the cover price. Everything else is a bonus and an incredible bonus at that. These stories are strange and creepy and fiery while still managing to be grounded in the emotional terrain of family life, teen angst, the day to day strain of living. I first read "Your Own Backyard" years ago when it appeared in a Scribners collection of workshop fiction. It didn't feel like a workshop story then and it still doesn't. A reviewer said that they thought his stories smacked of the workshop mill. Nothing could be further from the truth.