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Synopsis:

A big and big-hearted novel—one enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan, from the critically acclaimed author of Mr. Peanut (“A brilliant, powerful, and memorable book” —The New York Times)

“In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.”

Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York’s elite Boyd Prep—along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach—he’s teetering on the edge of collapse.

Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin’s senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink—whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother, Oren—Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi’s Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm.

Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era—with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age’s excesses—and who seem to care little about what their children are up to—Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.

Review:

When I was given the opportunity by the publisher to recieve an ARC of Playworld by Adam Ross for an honest review, I jumped at the opportunity. The name Adam Ross reminded me of the joy of reading Mr. Peanut when it came out in 2010, and I could not wait to dive into Playworld. The synopsis is interesting, if not a little disturbing. The story follows Griffin Hurt, a fourteen year old who has an affair with his mother’s friend, Naomi. She is thirty-six with two kids and a rich husband. His own father is struggling to make it as an actor, singer, and teacher, while Griffin lucks into a starring role in a television show, The Nuclear Family, as well as multiple film offers. Griffin struggles to balance acting, school work, wrestling, friends, and his budding interest in girls. 

Close to the end of the novel, Griffin says that he is spending his life swimming in an ocean that is made by adults. There are things that he does, things that he is exposed to, things that he is unaware of that get thrown onto him, and when he reacts slow or surprised, the adults around him have poor reactions. Not only do his mother and father do this, while battling their own demons of infidelity and the prospect that their fourteen year old son is already outpacing their success, but the poor reactions to his behavior by his school teachers, his acting costars, his wrestling coach, and even his friends’ parents. He wants so much to understand the world around him, yet the world does not seem to have easy access for him. People see him has a grown adult when he is still a hormone driven kid. He is successful, paying for his own private school, and in demand. His father looks at him like a peer and as the promise that he could not fulfill. His brother looks at him like the golden child who can do no wrong. His mother see him as an extension of his father, and Naomi, the grown woman who wants to have an affair with him, sees him as someone who can fulfill the desire she is not receiving in her marriage. The adults in his life see him as the solution to something they are missing in their lives, and Griffin struggles to do the things that he loves versus the things that are expected of him. This draws him inward, makes him introspective and lonely in a city where possibilities are endless, where friendships come and go, and where Griffin is trying to figure out what is best for him. 

The backdrop of this novel is the end of the Carter Administration and beginning of the Reagan Administration. This change of president, along with other events happening in this time, like everyone getting up early to watch Princess Diana and Prince Charles wedding, the shooting of John Lennon, the FAA strike, and the Iran hostage crisis, not only serve as markers in the year, but heightens the feelings that Griffin is going through. Looking back at this time frame with thirty years of hindsight, the narrative of these events can be shaped to fit Griffin’s life but also reflect some of the things that we are experiencing right now.

Adam Ross worked on this semi-biographical novel for over a decade. He has taken time to submerge us into a world where kids are doing whatever they want, with little to no supervision. Griffin drinks at parties and with a fake ID, drives cars, and has affairs with rich women. This freedom does not come with feelings of joy but with a huge burden. Ross spends 500 pages showing us this world, creating it piece by piece, and it does not feel like a place that we can ever leave, like it becomes our burden too. In the end, Ross does an wonderful job giving us a large coming-of-age novel where we are satisfied at the ending even if it seems like Griffin’s life is just beginning.