Playworld: A novel

by Adam Ross Narrated by Not Yet Available

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"A modern masterpiece, sharp and breathtaking and wise. Griffin, the young man at the center of this vivid bildungsroman, is someone you’d follow forward and backward and anywhere—across the sweaty mats of the high schoolwrestling team into a steamed-up car for a wildly sexy and heartbreakinglyhuman relationship with an older, married woman, and then into the glittering world of child acting. Remarkable." —Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women

"It's difficult to overpraise Playworld’s tragicomic scope, dazzling ambition,categorical brilliance. Ross writes so close to the bone that I winced while reading. And while young Griffin is brutalized and betrayed by the adults putting him through his sentimental education, Playworld is never hopeless. It instead reinforces our faith in art, that it can make and save a life. I have not read a book this weighty and soulful since I put it down, and I doubt I will again." —Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192502167
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged