Adam Ross with Gabrielle Bates

Arts & Culture

New York City in the 1980s. A time of class struggle, political shifts, and the enticing lure of fame and ambition. For overloaded high schooler Griffin Hurt, it’s also a time of ever-building pressures with no shortage of questionable outlets. Over the course of Adam Ross’s newest novel Playworld, Griffin attempts to navigate the uncertain landscape he finds himself in with a conflicted sense of who he should be looking to for guidance.

Griffin has a balancing act in front of him in more ways than one. Student life at the elite Boyd Prep, an increasingly demanding wrestling coach, a starring role on a hit network TV show, and a fraught home life complete with a family therapist Griffin won’t open up to. Then enters Naomi Shah, an older unhappily married woman from his parents’ social circle that Griffin grows to use as a controversial confidante. As the adults in his world prove unreliable and with questionable intentions, Playworld spins a story of miseducation and building stakes as Griffin grapples being shoved towards a world that he is ill-equipped to understand. Adam Ross casts an intimate look at the motivations and hardships of a young boy play-acting his way through a cast of dubious role models and unclear footholds. A blend of unflinchingly heavy and comedically clever, wrapped in themes of 1980s excess, impulse, and inattention, Playworld immerses readers in Griffin’s pursuit of solutions to problems that should be far out of a teenager’s reach.

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