May 2025: Playworld by Adam Ross
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.
***
Suggested Indie Bookstores:
Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle, WA)
Next Chapter Booksellers (St. Paul, MN)
New Story Community Books (Marshall, MI)
Happy Medium Books (Jacksonville, FL)
***
Favorite Quotes:
“The strangeness of saying goodbye, how I’d never thought of us or life in terms of goodbyes, how I’d never thought things ended.”
“What I was certain of was that for the first time in my life, I wanted to get to know someone. Just the fact that I knew nothing about Amanda seemed a terrible deficit—one that I had to remedy as soon as possible. That I might address this lack organized my horizon, oriented me in every direction.”
“Here, nearer to where the subways rumbled, to the network of pipelines into which the city’s catch basins fed, I was taught the indelible lesson that, to arrive at love, I must suffer through someone else’s idea of it. And yet even now, I resist the notion that we are reducible to our wounds.”
“Was that the meaning of life: that some people tried to kill things while others tried to save them? Was that what Oren understood? Were you always on one side, or did you daily pick sides anew? Did Oren feel like I abandoned him somehow? Was that why I felt so guilty? And if that pigeon had managed to soar free, would it soon forget this brush with death? Or would the sky forever be a greater joy?”
“As was the case with Gwyneth, spending all night out at Studio 54, we were impersonating the adults it seemed we knew only from afar.”
***
Other Stuff I’m Into Right Now:
The New Yorker crossword puzzles
Getting in bed at 8:30 PM
Replica Beach Walk perfume (Maison Margiela)
Spring cleaning
Shrimp scampi
Flat whites
Wine from a glass that’s sweating from humidity
Boats, Beaches, Bars, and Ballads by Jimmy Buffett (1992)
