Playground: A Novel

by Richard Powers Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini, Robin Siegerman, Eunice Wong, Pun Bandhu, Krys Janae, Kevin R Free

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

This multi-layered novel about life in, out of and around the ocean riffs on ideas of playgrounds and paradise; computer games and AI; adventure, exploration, colonization and more.

A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.

Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world's first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane's work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity's next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island's residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.

Set in the world's largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"[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.… [R]eminds, with a spirit of fun and wonder, why the sea—an alien planet within a planet—is so very worth sustained attention.… [T]he 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."— Alexandra Jacobs New York Times Book Review

"A characterful, capacious and engaging novel.… Powers’ unparalleled gifts for revealing the magic and mystery of the natural world are on full display."— The 2024 Booker Prize Judges

"Ravishing.… [Playground] implores us to open ourselves to the ingenuity of life beyond the human."— Regina Marler New York Review of Books

"Ambitious, rapturous.… A transcendentalist deep dive of a novel.… A fabulous exploration."— Xan Brooks Guardian

"Exhilarating.… [I]ntoxicating.… [A] sprawling parable of a book."— David L. Ulin Los Angeles Times

"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."— Randy Boyagoda Atlantic

"Richly hued.… [G]orgeous.… [N]o author has done more to turn our gaze outward to the mysteries of the universe, above our heads and below our feet."— Hamilton Cain Boston Globe

"[Powers] nimbly hopscotches between the wonders of nature and the marvels and dangers of cutting-edge science.… [B]rims with love for humanity and the planet."— Heller McAlpin, NPR

"Brilliant.… Powers draws these stories together in a mind-bending way that will transform the way you see the world."— Ron Charles, CBS "Book Report"

"Paint[s] the page with colour and refracted light.… [H]ugely ambitious."— John Self Financial Times

"Powers writes with erudition and electrifying beauty.… [T]rue, indisputable greatness."— Yagnishsing Dawoor Guardian

"Soaringly imaginative yet firmly grounded…[Playground] deals with the most pressing issues of our time in the most wrenchingly human terms."— Wendy Smith National Book Review

"History unspools in this luminous journey that interweaves a 3,000-year-old board game, AI and floating cities.… [A]ll-around delightful."— People

"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."— Taylor Antrim Vogue

"Powers evokes [the ocean’s] ever more fragile splendor with glimmering schools of sensual detail.… Ultra-vivid, wildly gripping, and visionary."— Jonathan Miles Garden & Gun

"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."— Nick Duerden Independent

"Magnificent.… A provocative exploration of our depths both interior and oceanic."— Kristin H. Macomber Washington Independent Review of Books

"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."— Chaya Colman and Sophie Ezra Glamour UK

"[Powers is] the greatest living American novelist.… An impressive and warm-hearted book."— Tom LeClair Open Letters Review

"Inimitable.… [Playground] immers[es] us in a boundless sense of wonder."— Emily Choate Nashville Scene

"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."— Percival Everett

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

"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."— Andrea Wulf

Kirkus Reviews

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

Powers juggled nine lead characters inThe 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.

2024 Booker Prize, Long-listed
2025 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, Long-listed
2024 Kirkus Prize, Short-listed

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191456409
Publisher:	Spotify Audiobooks
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos