Review of Playground by Richard Powers

Powers's novel is an exploration of the wonders of the ocean and also of the capacity of the human mind and imagination. The marching toward destruction of both of these makes for a nerve-racking, heartbreaking story. Playground's final section held surprises I did not anticipate, and their exposure colors the entirety of the story that precedes them.

We make things that we hope will be bigger than us, and then we’re desolate when that’s what they become.

Four people are connected across time and geography in Richard Powers's sweeping story of their lives and unlikely interconnectedness.

Evie Beaulieu becomes obsessed with marine life and diving when as a young girl she tests her father's invention, the first aqualung; Ina Aroita grows up moving from naval base to naval base in the Pacific, crafting art as her only constant; two friends at an elite Chicago high school, a privileged young man and a scholarship student, bond over an ancient game while one leans toward literature and one toward AI development.

While tracking these characters' lives, Powers explores issues around technology, ecology, humanity, responsibility, and interconnectedness. The ocean and its creatures inspire wonder in Evie and in those whose passion she ultimately ignites, and humans' destruction of ocean habitats--and destruction of our own critical thinking and capacity for imagination through AI--is presented as an unending, heartbreaking march toward our own end.

For every island is a canoe, and all the earth is an island, living by the grace of the immense and slowly turning blue creature.

Each of the main characters drives the story in a different way, and I was invested in the struggles and settings for all of them. Their eventual, late intersection wasn't wholly satisfying: one of the characters, the one I was most intrigued by, is essential earlier in the book but served as only a minor force at the end (this is due to the surprise aspect of the story that ultimately shapes the book).

The final section of Playground seemed headed toward a too-convenient ending, but instead brought clarity to the story that felt shocking within what had to that point felt like a novel exploring deep themes through a standard structure. I didn't anticipate the denouement and its vast implications, and I keep thinking about the way Powers achieved this story within a story and the punch that was packed in its reveal.

I listened to this novel as a library audiobook for my book club.

More Literary Fiction Favorites

Richard Powers is also the author of The Overstory, Bewilderment, and other novels.

For more literary fiction titles I've loved, please check out the titles at this link.