Playworld

A Novel

De: Adam Ross

Narrado por: Adam Ross

"Starting off 2025 with a novel this terrific gives me hope for the whole year."—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"A gorgeous cat's cradle of a book . . . The swirling vapors of Holden Caulfield are present in Playworld, for sure, but also Lolita, Willy Loman, Garp."—Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review

"Extraordinary . . . A beguiling ode to a lost era . . . Line for line the book is a revelation."—Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A big and big-hearted novel—one enthralling, transformative year in the life of a child actor coming of age in a bygone Manhattan, from the critically acclaimed author of Mr. Peanut

“In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, 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. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.”

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.

©2025 Adam Ross (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Engrossing . . . Things come to a head one fateful summer as, amid personal and family tumult, the maturing Griffin begins to inhabit his most important role: himself." —The New Yorker

“Dazzling and endearing . . . Gorgeously textured and frequently very funny, [Playworld] revels in all the heady, scuzzy, confusing bits of coming of age.” —Vogue ("The Best Books of 2025")

Nostalgic for a Gen Xer

Well developed story, filled with elements from my childhood. Listened to the author speak at a book club. He is well spoken and kind. Was happy to support him!

Is it over yet?

I'll be quick, a mercy I wish the author has granted the reader. The book is similar to Catcher in the Rye in that nothing really happens. It's a cycle of various relationships, wrestling, and acting that go nowhere. But where Catcher in the Rye does us the kindness of being short, this book goes on forever. Having said that, it's well written. Just don't expect any of the myriad storylines to go anywhere. What really bothered me was the narration. The cadence of his voice irritated me so much I almost almost stopped listening several times. He tends to draw out his vowels at commas and periods, making him sound like a clichéd beat poet. I imagined him snapping his fingers and saying "Yeah" throughout. Drove me nuts.

Enjoyable book marred by narration.

Adam Ross does his book no favors by narrating it himself. He has an unfortunate habit of turning simple sentences into two, three or four word phrases. It is a very annoying habit.

I didn’t want it to end

The voice the story the vocabulary were all beautiful.
I was sad when it came to the end.

Read by the autor vs being performed

Unfortunately I have to return this after 1 hour. The author is reading the text without much inflection or change of voice for different characters. His reading just doesn't hold my attention.

Fun

What a fun book . It’s just stories . I loved the references . Laugh out loud funny .

White Noise

This book seems to drone on and on and get nowhere. The preview makes it sound a lot more interesting than it is. Do I regret listening to it? No. It was filler. Mostly background noise with the occasional interesting aside but you soon realize the asides never go anywhere.

Author should NOT have narrated it

I tried to get past the poor narration because the story intrigued me. However, it was so poorly done that I gave up and returned it. I listened for about 3 hours to give it a fair chance. I will always check reviews in the future for any book narrated by the author. If you have listened to books by professional readers, you will be very disappointed in this one.