Playworld: A Novel

WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE A big and bighearted novelone enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan, from the critically acclaimed author of Mr. PeanutNAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, TOWN & COUNTRY, AND PEOPLE GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE FINALIST MULANEY READS BOOK CLUB PICKA gorgeous cats cradle of a book . . . The swirling vapors of Holden Caulfield are present in Playworld, for sure, but also Lolita, Willy Loman, Garp. Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book ReviewExtraordinary . . . A beguiling ode to a lost era . . . Line for line the book is a revelation. Leigh Haber, Los Angeles TimesIn the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirtysix, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didnt 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 Yorks elite Boyd Prepalong with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coachhes teetering on the edge of collapse.Then comes Naomi Shah, twentytwo years Griffins senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrinkwhom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brotherGriffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomis 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 erawith Jimmy Carter on his way out and a Blist celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the ages excessesand who seem to care little about what their children are up toGriffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.