'Playworld' by Adam Ross transports us to the seemingly innocent 80s

Adam Ross's extraordinary second novel, “Playworld,” is a beguiling ode to a lost era, before helicopter parenting, cell phones and perhaps even cynicism. It primarily takes place over the course of a year during which high school freshman Griffin Hurt receives a sentimental education like no other. Among the initial events: “In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen,” Griffin recalls, “a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six years old, the mother of two children, and married to a rich man.

Griffin narrates the novel as an adult who remembers this pivotal period of his coming of age with a kind of disconcerting irony, so that even the shocking events (the aforementioned affair, the muggings, a fire that burns down his apartment and kills his cat, even repeated sexual intercourse) abuse at the hands of Griffin's wrestling coach, Mr. Kepplemen, are cast in a vaporous haze. We really don't know to what extent, if at all, these events have traumatized the boy, as he shares: “I rarely feel things when they happen. “I’m still so isolated from myself.”

One result is that, while Griffin is an astute observer and a charming narrator, he cannot be counted on as a reliable narrator. This feeling is reinforced by the fact that he has been a successful (if reluctant) child actor and a self-confessed “student of all forms of dissimulation,” practiced in the art of withholding information that adults may find disturbing. Among those he rarely trusts, aside from his parents, is Elliot, Griffin's long-time psychoanalyst. Elliot is a close family friend who treats the entire Hurt family in one-on-one sessions, where he is as likely to fall asleep as he is to spout “bright and sometimes dark epigrams,” such as “we process all traumas like the oyster” or “swimmers.” strong.” They often drown.”

Griffin and his group of lost boys occupy Manhattan as if it were Neverland, a magical kingdom where adventure is always around the corner. Their escapades are primarily limited to the Upper West Side, where they roam freely through parks, nightclubs, stairwells, and others' apartments without adult supervision. Smoking and underage drinking go unnoticed.

In the case of Griffin and his younger brother, Oren, their parents, Shel and Lily, are worried about each other, focused primarily on Shel's careers and aspirations. Of his stunning mother, a ballet instructor and eternal graduate student, Griffin observes: “… [I]In our family food chain, Dad was the top and Oren and I were at the bottom.” His charismatic father is an enormously talented singer who has made a modest living doing commercial jingles and voice-overs, with some stellar appearances on stage. He watches with a combination of paternal pride and longing as his son effortlessly earns acting credits that Shel would die for, but which Griffin is begrudgingly doing to please his father and cushion the family's finances during Shel's dry spells. .

Ross is so adept at world-building that we are seduced by his vision of the Big Apple as something totally enchanting and mystical, as fascinating as the Dungeons & Dragons realm that Griffin creates so that he and his friends have “a universe that has a global reach.” history, a beginning, a development and an end.” The author's whimsical flourishes have a dual purpose: they mythologize the city and at the same time move its intrinsic threats to the background. In this version, children become smarter and more resilient when exposed to danger; They never fall apart.

Resilience is a quality Griffin has in abundance. He juggles the demands of film and television roles while struggling to keep up with schoolwork. Wrestling is his passion, but to stay in his weight class he regularly starves himself, sweating to lose weight by jogging in a rubber suit. And then there's Naomi, who waits for Griffin most afternoons in his silver Mercedes, hoping he wants her as much as she wants him, not understanding that he's just playing along: he has no influence.

“Playworld” is over 500 pages long, but I didn't want it to end. The story is so rich and full of intriguing (if morally questionable) characters that it is immersive. Line by line the book is a revelation. Her classmate Andrea is “a beauty in a black turtleneck” whose brown hair covered “her big eyes, with the tips cut so that they looked sharp and almost together, like the teeth of a staple remover.” A family friend's voice is “a splash of saliva mixed with a spoonful of gravel.” One afternoon, while taking the bus downtown with a girl he has a crush on, Griffin looks out the window and observes: “It was diorama time, when the evening is just beginning to fall and everything is bright and discreet.” . “When the city seems destroyed by a light bulb.” This entire review could be made up of phrases that I underlined for their beauty.

Ross has drawn from his own life when writing this epic tale, which explains its melancholic quality. He was also a child actor from the ages of 11 to 16, for example playing Alan Alda's son in the film “The Seduction of Joe Tynan.” He was also a champion wrestler who later worked to get his abusive former coach kicked out of the sport. Griffin knew his father had flaws, but he loved him dearly. Ross's father was also a stage and television actor who sang in musicals and lent his voice to countless commercials. The author's deep affection for his father is evident in the description of Shel.

The novel ends abruptly, without any real resolution, but I didn't care. I enjoyed having to imagine what might happen next to Griffin and his strangely attractive family. In the end, he was almost as excited as Griffin, who was biking home from the Great Lawn in Central Park, where he had finally spoken his mind: “I stood on my pedals to go faster. My radios sang the hum of their propellers. I felt light, as if my bones had been filled with air. …And then I turned toward the river and headed west.”

Leigh Haber is a writer, editor, and editorial strategist. She was the director of Oprah's Book Club and the book editor of O, The Oprah Magazine.