Playworld
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Adam Ross
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By:
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Adam Ross
About this listen
"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
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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Starting off 2025 with a novel this terrific gives me hope for the whole year . . . Playworld presents us with a story dipped in molten nostalgia and flecked with love and sorrow . . . A bildungsroman from which anger has been vented, and what’s left behind is redolent with insight, tenderness and forgiveness . . . The narrator’s voice is an extraordinary hybrid of a boy’s plaintive innocence and a man’s wry reflection . . . Somehow, Ross can recall high school with enough fidelity to re-create on the page that visceral feeling of utter bafflement at the behavior of adults. But nothing baffles Ross as a narrator. His powers of observation and sensation seem to invade every nook of these lives like the tentacles of some giant octopus with consciousness in every sucker . . . There’s not a dull line, and yet his prose doesn’t feel like a Christmas tree so freighted with baubles that the branches risk shearing off . . . Whatever past rough experiences Ross may be mining here, they’ve been compressed under the pressure of time and genius into a cluster of literary gems . . . Such is the stuff great novels are made on."—Ron Charles, The Washington Post (cover review)
"A gorgeous cat's cradle of a book . . . [Ross's] powers of observation and ironclad resistance to cliché yield perfect descriptions again and again . . . The swirling vapors of Holden Caulfield are present in Playworld, for sure, but also Lolita, Willy Loman, Garp. The novel is detailed, digressive, densely populated, dull at times (as life is) and capable of tracking the most minute shifts in emotional weather. It is the young and the restless, edging into the bold and the beautiful."—Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review
"Extraordinary . . . A beguiling ode to a lost era . . . Ross is so adept at world-building that we are seduced by his vision of the Big Apple as wholly enchanting and mystical . . . I didn’t want it to end. The story is so rich and filled with intriguing—if morally questionable—characters that it’s immersive. Line for line the book is a revelation."—Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times
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Story
A modern story of family, I’ll Come to You chronicles intersecting lives over the course of one year—1995—anchored by the anticipation and arrival of a child. With empathy, insight, and humor, Rebecca Kauffman explores overlapping narratives involving a couple whose struggle to become pregnant has both softened and hardened them; a woman whose husband of forty years has left her for reasons he’s unwilling to share and the man who is now attempting to woo her; and a couple in denial about a looming health crisis as well as their son who is fumbling toward middle age and can’t stop lying.
By: Rebecca Kauffman
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The Granddaughter
- A Novel
- By: Bernhard Schlink
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip, Sarah Moule
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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It is only after the sudden death of his wife, Birgit, that Kaspar discovers the price she paid years earlier when she fled East Germany to join him: she had to abandon her baby. Shattered by grief, yet animated by a new hope, Kaspar closes up his bookshop in present day Berlin and sets off to find her lost child in the east. His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, intent on reclaiming and settling ancestral lands to the East. Among them, Kaspar encounters Svenja, a woman whose eyes, hair, and even voice remind him of Birgit.
By: Bernhard Schlink
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Vantage Point
- A Novel
- By: Sara Sligar
- Narrated by: Adam Ewer, Helen Laser, Jess Nahikian
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Clara and her brother, Teddy, grew up on a small island in Maine in the shadow of their parents’ tragic deaths, haunted by rumors and paparazzi. Fourteen years later, they’ve mostly put their turbulent past to rest. Teddy has married Clara’s best friend, Jess, and the three of them have moved back home to take over the sprawling, remote family mansion known as Vantage Point. Then Teddy decides to run for the Senate—an unnerving prospect made much worse when intimate videos of Clara are leaked online.
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Unique thriller!
- By Cynthia Jackson on 01-17-25
By: Sara Sligar
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The Heart of Winter
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Evison
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together—at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a seventy-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador, Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and from their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged.
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A beautiful story about a lifetime love
- By Maren’s Reads on 01-19-25
By: Jonathan Evison
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How to Sleep at Night
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Harris
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Ethan and Gabe. A devoted couple for years, they have successful careers, an adorable daughter, and a house in the New Jersey suburbs. Sure, they may have drifted to different ends of the political spectrum, but their marriage still has its spark. Then one night Ethan makes an announcement: he wants to run for Congress as a Republican—but only if he has progressive Gabe’s blessing.
By: Elizabeth Harris
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Gliff
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Eliot Sumner
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse. From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.
By: Ali Smith
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The Dream Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Laila Lalami
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Barton Caplan
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days. The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes.
By: Laila Lalami
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The Note
- A Novel
- By: Alafair Burke
- Narrated by: Catherine Ho
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up, May Hanover was a good girl, always. Well-behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May didn’t have room to slip up, let alone fail. Her friends didn’t call her the Little Sheriff for nothing. But even good girls have secrets. And regrets. When it comes to her friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she's had her fair share of both.
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Wasted credit
- By Ann L on 01-19-25
By: Alafair Burke
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All the Water in the World
- A Novel
- By: Eiren Caffall
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north.
By: Eiren Caffall
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The Antidote
- A Novel
- By: Karen Russell
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell comes a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories.
By: Karen Russell
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Bittersweet in the Hollow
- By: Kate Pearsall
- Narrated by: Reagan Boggs
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In rural Caball Hollow, surrounded by the vast National Forest, the James women serve up more than fried green tomatoes at the Harvest Moon diner, where the family recipes are not the only secrets. Like her sisters, Linden was born with an unusual ability. She can taste what others are feeling, but this so-called gift soured her relationship with the vexingly attractive Cole Spencer one fateful night a year ago . . . A night when Linden vanished into the depths of the Forest and returned with no memories of what happened, just a litany of questions.
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Practical Magic meets A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
- By Heather on 02-19-24
By: Kate Pearsall
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The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf
- By: Isa Arsén
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Isa Arsén
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Up-and-coming stage actress Margaret Shoard has just taken a bow as Lady Macbeth, the role she has always believed was destined for her. At home, she plays wife to her best friend Wesley, even if she doesn’t hold his sole attention romantically. After a public breakdown threatens all she holds dear, Margaret’s doctor prescribes her uppers—just a little help to get through the days.
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Unputdownable
- By Maren’s Reads on 01-08-25
By: Isa Arsén
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Sweet Fury
- By: Sash Bischoff
- Narrated by: Sash Bischoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A twisty, thought-provoking novel of construction and deconstruction in conversation with the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and told through the lens of the film industry, Sweet Fury is an incisive and bold critique of America’s deep-rooted misogyny.
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A feminist homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
- By Amazon Customer on 01-20-25
By: Sash Bischoff
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The Capital of Dreams
- A Novel
- By: Heather O'Neill
- Narrated by: Paige McKinney
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Sofia Bottom lives in Elysia, a small country forgotten by Europe. But inside its borders, the old myths of trees that come alive and faeries who live among their roots have given way to an explosion of the arts and the consolations of philosophy. From the clarinetists to the cabaret singers, no artist is as revered as Sofia’s brilliant mother, the writer Clara Bottom. How can fourteen-year-old Sofia, with her tin ear and enduring love of ancient myths, ever hope to win her mother’s love?
By: Heather O'Neill
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The Forger's Requiem
- By: Bradford Morrow
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Literary forger Henry Slader, assaulted and presumed dead by his longtime nemesis, Will, awakens in a shallow grave, suffocating in dirt. Concussed and disoriented, Slader exhumes himself and sets out to exact revenge on his rival, orchestrate Will's downfall, and make a fortune along the way—armed with a devastating secret about Will's past. Slader quickly draws in Will's daughter, Nicole, wielding his threats against her father to blackmail her into forging inscriptions by such authors as Poe, Hemingway, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein.
By: Bradford Morrow
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Homeseeking
- By: Karissa Chen
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin, Kenneth Lee
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back. Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.
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Wonderful story
- By Jennifer Savage on 01-19-25
By: Karissa Chen
What listeners say about Playworld
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- Possum Bean
- 01-10-25
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.
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- Brady9876543
- 01-14-25
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.
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