Adam Ross’ extraordinary second novel, “Playworld,” is a beguiling ode to a lost era, one that predates helicopter parenting, cellphones and perhaps even cynicism. It is set primarily over the course of one year during which prep school freshman Griffin Hurt undergoes a sentimental education like no other. Among the initiating 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, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man.”
Griffin narrates the novel as an adult recalling this seminal period in his coming of age with a sort of bemused irony, so that even shocking events — the aforementioned affair, muggings, a fire that burns down their apartment and kills their cat, even repeated sexual abuse at the hands of Griffin’s wrestling coach, Mr. Kepplemen — are cast in a gauzy haze. We really don’t know how deeply these events have traumatized the boy, if at all, as he shares: “I so rarely feel things when they happen. I remain so insulated from myself.”
One result is that while Griffin is an astute observer and a charming storyteller, he can’t be counted on to be a reliable narrator. This sense is reinforced by the fact that he’s been a successful (if reluctant) child actor and a self-confessed “student of all forms of dissembling,” practiced in the art of withholding information adults may find disturbing. Among those he rarely confides in — aside from his parents — is Griffin’s longtime psychoanalyst, Elliot. Elliot is a close family friend who treats the entire Hurt family in individual sessions, where he is as likely to snooze as to toss off “brilliant and sometimes obscure epigrams,” such as “we process all trauma like the oyster” or “strong swimmers often drown.”
Griffin and his band of lost boys occupy Manhattan as if it’s Neverland, a magical kingdom where adventure is always around the corner. Their escapades are mostly confined to the Upper West Side, where they freely roam parks, nightclubs, stairwells and one another’s apartments unencumbered by adult oversight. Cigarette smoking and underage drinking go unremarked upon.
In the case of Griffin and his younger brother, Oren, their parents, Shel and Lily, are preoccupied with each other, focused mainly on Shel’s careers and aspirations. Of his stunning mother, a ballet instructor and eternal grad student, Griffin observes: “… [I]n our family food chain, Dad was her apex and Oren and I were at the bottom.” Their charismatic father is a hugely talented singer who’s made a modest living mostly doing commercial jingles and voice-overs, with a few star turns onstage. He watches with a combination of paternal pride and yearning as his son effortlessly scores acting credits Shel would die for but which Griffin is doing begrudgingly to please his dad — and to 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 wholly enchanting and mystical, as bewitching as the Dungeons & Dragons kingdom Griffin creates so that he and his friends will have “a universe that has an overarching story, a beginning, middle, and an end.” The author’s whimsical flourishes serve a dual purpose: They mythify the city while moving its intrinsic threats to the background. In this version, kids become savvier and more resilient when exposed to danger; they never crumble.
Resilience is a quality Griffin has in spades. 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 off pounds by jogging in a rubber suit. And then there’s Naomi, who waits for Griffin most afternoons in her silver Mercedes, hoping he will desire her as much as she does him, not comprehending that he is only playing along: He has no leverage.
“Playworld” is more than 500 pages long, yet I didn’t want it to end. The story is so rich and filled with intriguing — if morally questionable — characters that it’s immersive. Line for line the book is a revelation. Classmate Andrea is “a beauty in a black turtleneck” whose chestnut hair veiled “her large eyes, the ends cut so that they appeared sharp and nearly pinched together, like a staple remover’s teeth.” A family friend’s voice is “a dash of spit mixed with a scoop of gravel.” While taking the bus uptown one late afternoon with a girl he has a crush on, Griffin peers out the window and observes: “It was the diorama hour, when evening is just beginning to descend and everything is brilliant and discrete. When the city seems scrimshawed on a lit bulb.” This entire review could be made up of sentences I underlined for their beauty.
Ross has extracted from his own life in writing this epic tale, which accounts for its wistful quality. He too was a child actor from the age of 11 to 16, for one, 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 banned from the sport. Griffin knew his dad was flawed but fervently loved him. Ross’ father too was a television and stage performer who sang in musicals and voiced countless commercials. The author’s deep affection for his father shines through in the depiction of Shel.
The novel concludes abruptly, without a true resolution, but I didn’t mind. I enjoyed having to imagine what might happen next to Griffin and his strangely appealing family. By the end, I was nearly as exhilarated as Griffin, riding his bike home from Central Park’s Great Lawn, where he’d finally spoken his mind: “I stood on my pedals to go faster. My spokes sang their propeller whirr. I felt light, as if my bones had filled with air. … And then I turned toward the river and headed west.”
Leigh Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.
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