Playworld, by Adam Ross

Playworld, by Adam Ross, continues my 2026 streak of excellent reading. Another five-star novel, and one that kept resurfacing in my brain long after I turned the final page.

The story centers on Griffin Hurt, a fourteen-year-old attending an elite Manhattan prep school in the early 1980s. Griffin is talented and thoughtful, but naïve. He’s also pretty overwhelmed by life. He’s a competitive wrestler, a child actor starring on a TV series called The Nuclear Family, and a kid trying to get through adolescence in a city that sometimes offers very little protection from adulthood. He carries an unrequited crush on a classmate, a strained relationship with his brother after a traumatic house fire (that he started), and constant pressure from nefarious adults who seem far more invested in their own needs than his.

The author places Griffin in a world where boundaries are either blurred, or totally ignored. A nasty, demanding wrestling coach crosses the line, sexually, under the guise of mentorship. A trusted family friend, Naomi, who at 36 (22 years his senior) draws young Griffin into an emotionally damaging relationship that he is far too young to understand, let alone control. These moments aren’t just written for shock value; they accumulate over time, shaping Griffin’s fragile emotional state and his growing reliance on detachment from the world as a survival skill.

The novel is long (just over 500 pages), and while there are sections that meander, I ultimately felt the length was justified. Initially, it felt like some of the digressions and minor characters were unnecessary padding, but I realized that they weren’t.  In fact, they helpfully fleshed out Griffin’s life and made him more real and relatable. Ross also used some cool period detail to fully inhabit a very specific New York: a city of unsupervised kids, distracted parents, and cultural excess. They called this time period “The Me Decade”, and the era is evoked subtly but effectively (especially when describing the life of well-to-do Naomi and her materialistic husband), grounding the story without turning it into standard nostalgia.

What impressed me most is Ross’s restraint as an author. This is not a sensational, salacious coming-of-age story. It’s a novel about miseducation and misguidance: how a bright, observant boy learns all the wrong lessons, by both well-meaning - and not-so well-meaning - adults. Griffin’s parents, flawed but human, are drawn with nuance. All of the characters, in fact, are very well fleshed out. 

Despite the dark-ish theme, Playworld is often funny, sharp, and unexpectedly tender. Griffin is a compelling guide through a childhood that feels both completely bizarre and uncomfortably familiar. It’s a time-consuming read, but a very rewarding one. I’m still thinking about it.