Playground: A Novel|Hardcover (original) (raw)

07/22/2024

Pulitzer winner Powers (The Overstory) delivers an epic drama of AI, neocolonialism, and oceanography in this dazzling if somewhat disjointed novel set largely on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, where a mysterious American consortium plans to launch floating cities into the ocean. The story centers on three characters: Rafi Young, a former literature student from an abusive home in Chicago who has moved to Makatea with his wife; Rafi’s onetime friend Todd Keane, the billionaire founder of a social media company and AI platform whose connection to the seasteading project is revealed later; and Evelyne Beaulieu, a Canadian marine biologist who has come to Makatea just as the island’s residents must vote on whether to let the project proceed. For some Makateans, the seasteading initiative raises hopes of economic renewal; for others, it triggers fears of environmental destruction and a return to colonialist oppression. Powers’s characters can be implausibly cerebral and pure of heart, and his narrative threads never fully cohere, but the elegance of his prose, the scope of his ambition, and the exacting reverence with which he writes about the imperiled natural world serve as reminders of why he ranks among America’s foremost novelists. “The ocean absorbed all her hope and excitement,” Powers writes of Evelyne, “into a place far larger than anything human.” Readers will be awed. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Sept.)

"Brims with love for humanity and the planet.… [Powers] nimbly hopscotches between the wonders of nature and the marvels and dangers of cutting-edge science."

"A richly layered story that examines the intersection of technology, nature, and personal relationships. Powers' signature blend of intellectual depth and compelling storytelling shines through… Thought-provoking literature that engages both the mind and heart."

"Inimitable… [_Playground_] immers[es] us in a boundless sense of wonder."

"A characterful, capacious and engaging novel, distilling subjects as diverse as oceanography, climate change, the legacies of colonialism and the arc of a lifelong friendship into an exhilaratingly entangled narrative in which Powers’ unparalleled gifts for revealing the magic and mystery of the natural world are on full display."

"Richly hued… Gorgeous… No author has done more to turn our gaze outward to the mysteries of the universe, above our heads and below our feet."

"Magnificent… A provocative exploration of our depths both interior and oceanic."

"Is there anything Richard Powers cannot write? The world here is complete, seductive, and promising. The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep, and alive."

"Unexpected and genuinely fascinating… Ingenious tricks and clever devices abound in Powers's fiction, but never before with the provocative implications of the turn in Playground."

"True, indisputable greatness… Powers writes with erudition and electrifying beauty."

"Ultra-vivid, wildly gripping, and visionary… Powers evokes [the ocean's] ever more fragile splendor with glimmering schools of sensual detail."

"Exhilarating… intoxicating… [A] sprawling parable of a book."

"Ambitious, rapturous… A transcendentalist deep dive of a novel… What a lush, opaque world Powers conjures… A fabulous exploration."

"[Powers is] a grand old oak of American letters: a towering, sturdy figure often overlooked for flashier species…. Playground is an enchanting entry point to his work that swings open easily…. Reminds, with a spirit of fun and wonder, why the sea — an alien planet within a planet — is so very worth sustained attention… The late twist… whorled as a seashell, may leave even the highest VO2 max reader gasping a little for air…. This is a novel that pries us from our daily hourglass, forcing a hard focus on the sand."

"Prepare to be awed… A mind-blowing reflection on what it means to live on a dying planet… I wasn’t prepared for the astonishing resolution that Powers delivers. In the now-vast library of fiction and nonfiction books reminding us of the planet’s imperiled condition, I can’t think of another novel that treats the Earth’s plight with such an expansive and disorienting vision… Powers manages to entwine our longing for friendship, paradise and immortality with the algorithms of artificial intelligence that surpass all understanding."

"Powers is a master of taking important topics of our times—from threats to our oceans and climate change to AI—and turning them into riveting and fiercely relevant books imbued with psychological insight and a deep awe for nature. This eloquent dance of the scientific and emotional makes him one of our finest storytellers. Playground is brilliant, captivating, and important—and the best book I’ve read this year."

"Soaringly imaginative yet firmly grounded… [_Playground_] deals with the most pressing issues of our time in the most wrenchingly human terms."

"History unspools in this luminous journey that interweaves a 3,000-year-old board game, AI and floating cities.…all-around delightful."

"[Powers is] the greatest living American novelist… An impressive and warm-hearted book."

"An extraordinarily immersive journey through lives linked in mysterious ways—gripping, alarming, and uplifting."

"Vivid and ambitious…a love letter to the natural world.…Playground is ravishing in its descriptions of an underwater universe as fragile as it is ancient and unyielding."

"Hugely ambitious… Paint[s] the page with colour and refracted light."

"You’ll never look at the ocean the same way again. Playground isn’t merely a great American novel, but a magnificent one…. Increasingly gripping… brilliant on the complications of friendship… incandescently beautiful… In a word: wow."

"A novel of spectacular thematic scope and surreal drama… The author's genius shows in his formidable descriptive talents and the graceful clarity of his densely woven plot… Powers meticulously sets the stage with vivid, immersive details to ignite the readers imagination."

"Evocatively nuanced.... Rhapsodic with wonder, electric with cautionary facts and insights, Powers' profound and involving novel illuminates the conundrums of human nature."

"Vivid and ambitious ... a love letter to the natural world.... Playground is ravishing in its descriptions of an underwater universe as fragile as it is ancient and unyielding."

09/01/2024

Powers's (The Overstory) novel begins with a creation myth. Ta'aroa makes an egg to house himself, cracks out of his shell, and uses the shards to make the world. It's a glorious start to a transcendent novel about love and what humanity has done to our damaged world. Marine biologists Evelyn and Bart love each other but even more, Evelyne loves the ocean. Still diving in her 90s, she lives in Makatea, French Polynesia (population 82). Rafi and Todd were high school buddies but also antagonists, Rafi twisted by his parents' anger toward white people, Todd ignored by white parents unable to see him. They bond over Go and room together in college. Rafi meets Polynesian artist Ina, everything he could want. But it can't free him from his conflicted relationship with a world he can't accept. Decades later, mega-rich Todd embraces a project to transform the world by creating artificial islands floating on the sea; the residents of Makatea must vote on whether to accept the project. Todd and Rafi meet again but Todd, who now has dementia, can't communicate. The book ends unresolved. What will the future hold for Makatea? And us? VERDICT Powers's extraordinary novels are a rebuttal to the notion that what stirs the mind can't also stir the heart.—David Keymer

★ 2024-06-15
A story of friendship, technology, oceans, and a small island.

Powers juggled nine lead characters in_The Overstory_ (2018), his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Here he wrangles just four, but the result is almost as complicated. Two nerdish boys, Rafi Young and Todd Keane, bond in high school over chess and Go. In college, Rafi falls in love with Ina Aroita, a Hawaii-born Navy brat whose mother is Tahitian. The men fall out shortly after brainstorming over Todd’s idea for a computer game called Playground. This strand of the novel is told in retrospect by Todd at age 57, addressing an unidentified “you,” after he receives a diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies; he’s an unreliable narrator in more than one way. Interspersed are scenes in later years on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, scarred by phosphate mining and down to a population of 82, including Rafi and Ina and the novel’s fourth lead, an elderly Canadian scuba diver named Evelyne Beaulieu. Her lifelong love of the diversity and preciousness of aquatic life provides the book’s other narrative strand and its environmental theme. Through Todd, Powers sketches the computer and social media revolutions, from early coding to gaming to AI. The counterpoint to this high-tech history is Makatea, a paradise lost to industrial mining that decades later must decide whether to accept a consortium’s lucrative proposal to use the island to build floating autonomous cities. This is a challenging novel, fragmented but compelling, with fine writing on friendship and its loss and on the awe and delight the ocean inspires. Along with its environmental warnings, the book carries an intriguing look at the ways people and animals play, as in the boys’ competitive chess, the antics of manta rays, the allure of computer games, and what a meta-minded author might do with his readers.

An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.