Publication Date: 26/09/2024 ISBN: 9781529154313 Category: Books

Playground

Richard Powers

Publisher: Cornerstone

Publication Date: 26/09/2024 ISBN: 9781529154313 Category: Books

Hardback £20.00

Mr B's review

Playground centres around two friends Todd and Rafi, who meet at high-school in Chicago. Both come from very different backgrounds, and yet they immediately bond over skilful games like Chess and Go. Then there is Evie, who at twelve years old became the youngest person to dive underwater with an ‘aqua lung’ that her dad helped develop. Years later, she breaks all sorts of boundaries as a woman leading pioneering research into the greatest love of her life – the ocean.

Their lives converge (in ways I won’t reveal) on the French Polynesian atoll of Makatea, an island once mined by outsiders for phosphates, used by capitalist countries for fertilisers and more. Once more on the brink of change, the islanders must cast their vote on whether to bring outsiders in and make way for a new Makatea for future generations.

At times a campus novel, at others a scientific study of the sea and all it’s bewildering life and the merky depths of AI and technology, Playground doesn’t shy away from tackling big themes here. It’s incredibly moving, thought-provoking, and yet for a novel that inevitably focuses on climate change, I came away feeling unexpedtly uplifted, and already missing these wonderful characters. – Emma

Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024

A POWERFUL NEW NOVEL FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AND BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THE OVERSTORY AND BEWILDERMENT

‘Is there anything Richard Powers cannot write? The world here is complete, seductive, and promising. The writing feels like the ocean. Vast, mysterious, deep and alive’ PERCIVAL EVERETT

‘An extraordinarily immersive journey through lives linked in mysterious ways – gripping, alarming and uplifting’ EMMA DONOGHUE

Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game. It sets them up for life: Rafi will get lost in literature, while Todd’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

Elsewhere, 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.

All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out into the open sea. As the seasteaders close in, how will Evie play the ever-unfolding oceanic game? Will Ina engage in acts of destruction? Todd and Rafi, now estranged, still find themselves in competition: Todd unravels while working on an idea to redraw the boundaries of human immortality, while Rafi and the residents must decide if they will greenlight the new project on their shores and change their home forever.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize and interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

‘Powers is a master of taking important topics of our times – from threats to our oceans and climate change to AI – and turning them into riveting and fiercely relevant books imbued with psychological insight and a deep awe for nature. This eloquent dance of the scientific and emotional makes him one of our finest story tellers. PLAYGROUND is brilliant, captivating and important – and the best book I’ve read this year’ ANDREA WULF

More praise for Richard Powers:

‘Powers has extraordinary gifts as a writer’ GUARDIAN
‘Impressively precise in its scientific conjectures, Bewilderment is no less rich or wise in its emotionality’ OBSERVER
‘He composes some of the most beautiful sentences I’ve ever read. I’m in awe of his talent’ OPRAH WINFREY
‘It is impossible to deny the importance of Powers’s message’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘Refreshing, original and moving’ EVENING STANDARD