Playground: A Novel

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars | 3,701 ratings

Price: 15.3

Last update: 02-13-2025


About this item

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.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Max Stockinger
    5.0 out of 5 stars Like poetry Beautifully written The situations and people engage feeling and deep thought
    Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2024
    This is Richard Powers's BEST book yet. It is like being Immersed in the world of marine life--astonishing in its complexity, words GLOWING in their beauty. I "oohed" and "ahhed" my way through reading this, wanting to share Pages and Pages with friends! I Highly recommend this. The three main characters are Alive to the reader; they change and grow in front of our eyes. Problems are laid out with ramifications not easily solved. True to life, messy and surprising, intense, sad, life captured , growing like coral--a GREAT BOOK. To Read this enlarges the mind's grasp of reality. And what an ENDING!! I won't give it away!
  • Mysteri Reader
    5.0 out of 5 stars another amazing novel from Richard Powers
    Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2025
    What The Overstory did to illuminate the importance of trees in the world, Playground does for the ocean ecosystem. A fabulous, compelling novel that sheds light on the impact of climate change and environmental destruction on the oceans, with Powers's trademark interweaving of compelling narratives and intersecting characters. Loved it.
  • David Frances
    4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful & confusing
    Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2024
    This book is an homage to life, a cautionary tale about AI’s encroachment on it; and a love story involving the living ocean and two sets of human protagonists. Of course, it’s beautifully written; it’s by Richard Powers! It is prodigious. At times, though, especially in the book’s first half, the chapters are disjointed, forcing me to turn back repeatedly to capture connections that I must have missed, but really hadn’t. It all comes together in the end, although even that contains elements of confusion. (Likely planted on purpose.) That’s why I rated it four stars instead of five. Most likely, however, the lost star is more attributable to my own shortcomings than to the book’s. Richard Powers is that good.
  • Arianne
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece
    Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2024
    Exquisite. Over the course of reading this book, I laughed, I cried, I gasped with wonder. At times I had to stop reading and just breathe. At other times I stopped reading in order to re-read, slowly, the exquisite beauty of Mr. Powers' words. I believe this book is his masterpiece. Many of his books I've found difficult with dense, almost inaccessible, explanation, terms and side tracks. Not this one. The storylines are perfectly integrated, the "explanations" are so sinuously gorgeous, I stopped to read them again and again and gasped in wonder and delight. And grief and horror. But this isn't a simplistic "message" book. It's complex, it's multilayered. And it's wise. Thank you, Mr. Powers, for this book. I will treasure it.
  • Kay twists
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
    Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2025
    Another excellent, thought provoking novel from Richard Powers. The quality of the writing is first class!
  • BluegrassPicker
    5.0 out of 5 stars Another Powers Triumph
    Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2024
    "I have a story to tell, the story of my friend and me and how we changed the future of mankind." [p. 137]

    "I asked you for a bedtime story, and you've conjured up a world so palpable that I mistake your characters for the people they once were." [p. 372]

    Who wrote this book? The author named on the cover and the copyright page is Richard Powers. But there is another author implied, and to grasp that is to make sense of some contradictions and chronological anomalies.

    There are two stories here. One has an omniscient narrator; the other is told by Todd Keane, a billionaire Facebook-like developer who is dictating his memoirs to an unnamed party as he faces his own decline from Lewy body dementia. Some of the same characters appear in both tales, but the one told by the omniscient narrator covers a broader scope. It is largely set on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, which relinquished its phosphate mining rights years ago to a company that left the island in tatters. Now, a new suitor has appeared -- a wealthy corporation that wants to use Makatea as a base for a "seasteading" operation, aiming to construct a floating city that will not need to answer much to any external political power. The 82 residents of Makatea must vote on whether to accept that proposal, which promises rebuilding and riches.

    Among Makatea's population are Rafi Young and Ina Aroita, who met as students at the University of Illinois. Rafi, a Black man, spent his childhood in a rough Chicago neighborhood; Ina, an artist, grew up in the South Pacific. They have adopted two orphaned children, and they seem to enjoy living away from the bustle of city life. Another island resident is Evelyne Beaulieu, a highly accomplished diver from Montreal, who once wrote a children's book extolling the wonders of the ocean.

    As a ten year-old, Todd Keane acquired Beaulieu's book, which he found enchanting. In times of stress, he imagined himself able to breathe under water, while walking from Illinois to Michigan via the bottom of the Great Lake. Todd came from a wealthy family in a North Shore suburb of Chicago. He was sent to an exclusive prep school, where he met Rafi, who was there by way of a scholarship endowed by Todd's father. Rafi was of a literary bent, in contrast to Todd's analytic mindset, but they bonded over chess, and -- later -- the ancient game of Go. The two of them ended up as roommates at the University of Illinois, where Todd had access to the university's powerful mainframe computer system, and Rafi studied literature. Eventually, Todd conceived the idea of an online platform that allowed participants to interact with one another; Rafi suggested that it could be improved by awarding points to players on the basis of their rated comments. The game, which came to be called Playground, evolved into a highly successful product that made Todd extremely rich. Rafi remained immersed in his literary endeavors, and the two eventually lost contact with each other, due in part to Todd's impulsive violation of Rafi's privacy concerning a tragic childhood episode.

    A review of _Playground_ doesn't really need to recapitulate the entirety of its (mainly complementary) stories. Powers produces many compelling, cinematic descriptions of underwater sea life, which may represent his attempt to convince readers that the deteriorating oceans are worth rescuing (i.e., an aquatic version of his earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, _The Overstory_, which did the same for trees). His long-standing interest in computers is also prominent, nodding to current artificial intelligence projects such as ChatGPT, and sounding warnings about the future perils of AI. The book's final pages reconcile its two storylines, resolving a puzzle that must have been on the minds of readers up to that point. Powers' polymathic brilliance illuminates the entire work.
  • Zovo Arcnor
    4.0 out of 5 stars Makatea reunion
    Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2024
    The intimate details of several lives converge, after a lifetime of experiences, on a tiny island with 83 inhabitant in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Here, the ocean is the star and the playground. Contemporary issues are exposed, if not reasoned, such a race, colonialism, climate, capitalism and the rights of sea creatures, some of which are conscious and presumably intelligent. The author's search is excellent and he exposed the inner lives of his characters. I found the pace slow and the plot lost out to the political narratives, but the writing is superb.

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