I think that this book incorporates much of what Richard Powers does well, but ultimately the execution of the story falls flat for me.

One of Powers's greatest strengths as an author is his invocation of the natural world to add meaning to his stories. He writes beautiful prose about nature, and highlights the implications for the natural world of each story he writes. This is no different in Playground, and I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of ocean life throughout the novel. I think it is particularly important to focus on the ocean, as it is an arena that is being affected by climate change in many ways that we cannot see on land. I greatly appreciated that element of the novel.

Additionally, I think that Powers is good at writing about ideas that are futuristic, but feasible, and have important real world implications. I loved the concept of a novel centered around the redevelopment of Makatea to restore the island to a hub of industry with a futuristic outlook. What was once a hub for phosphate mining would now become the home of the construction and launch of components of a futuristic floating city. While this is not yet possible, it is conceivable that this would be a project of the near future. Additionally, the book does a good job of exploring many of the ramifications of such a project, also touching on the history of the island and how it has suffered since the mining operations moved away. It is clear that approving this new development would likely restart a cycle of development and dilapidation.

However, I did not enjoy the story itself much for several reasons. First, I didn't love the characterization. I felt like the central characters were a bit too superlative: Todd is the world's richest man, and Evelyne is one of the most prolific marine biologists in the world - I struggle to reconcile their grand importance with the depiction of Makatea as a tiny isolated island that is the focus of the story. Rafi's story feels a bit inauthentic; as if it's an idealized depiction of a black man from an underprivileged background who overcomes trauma to discover more meaningful intellectual pursuits. I don't necessarily think that these characters existing is impossible or even improbable, but this made the story feel less authentic to me.

I also felt uncomfortable with Rafi's backstory itself. It is horribly tragic, and I'm not sure that that was necessary to get across the background that Rafi comes from. It didn't sit right with me to write that way about the novel's lone black character, either.

Second, I feel like the Ina's character was not nearly flushed out enough. To me, there was a lot of detail on the childhoods and backgrounds of Todd and Rafi, and this came at the expense of Ina's characterization. I feel like Ina is supposed to be centrally important to the story, and yet there is almost nothing that sticks out about her character aside from her being married to Rafi. When she enters the backstory of Todd and Rafi, she's first introduced as the woman Rafi will marry, and she barely rises above that status. By the end of the novel, she's supposed to represent a more authentic perspective of a pacific islander, but I think that that perspective is completely underdeveloped to the point where I didn't actually connect with it like I felt I should have. Her vote in the island's referendum was left vague, and I think this would have carried far more weight as intended if I actually understood more about her as a character. Instead, she was oddly vague, including the plot point of lying about Rafi's death to Todd for some reason.

Finally, I think that the direction the story takes is completely improbable, and undercuts the serious issues that the book gets at. My understanding is that Powers is going for a more idyllic outcome to paint a picture of how it is possible to overcome the degradation that results from climate change and future developments such as the one that is central to the novel. However (spoiler warning), I think that when writing fiction about the impacts of climate change, it's a disservice to the action that is necessary to incorporate a billionaire into the storyline and then end the novel with him donating his entire fortune toward the cause of preservation because he feels guilty about his past personal issues. This will never happen in the real world, and paints a way out of the real climate problems of the novel that is all but impossible. Billionaires are the primary party responsible for much of the destruction that has been done to the natural world, and the ending of this novel feels like borderline propaganda to support the notion that they aren't actually all bad. I don't know how I would have written the ending of this story differently, but I do not think that it's appropriate to go for a hopeful ending to the extent that Powers did.

As a final afterthought, I also think that invoking the concept of play and the playground was an interesting thread throughout the story, and I enjoyed how it was used to depict the behavior of ocean life, such as the manta rays. However, again I think that at the end of the novel it paints an inaccurate picture of the future, and just how devastating climate change is actually on course to be. ( )

What an intense story, and compelling in so many ways. The characters were so different from each other, yet shared the same goal. Well done, once again, Richard Powers. . ( )

[3.75] Powers once again wields his literary magic and unbridled imagination to showcase humanity’s complex relationship with nature. Few authors can more skillfully serve up ecological themes in such engaging and accessible narratives.

True, I enjoyed “Bewilderment” more than the author’s most recent work (As for “The Overstory,” I’m in a tiny minority of readers who found the Pulitzer Prize-winning book maddeningly tedious.) “Playground” also has some slow-paced spots, but not many. His ode to our oceans is thought-provoking and educational – without becoming overly scholarly. Unlike some readers who found the high-tech/AI companion plot jarring or disorienting, I loved it. The technology angle became a welcome digression in several sections when I was growing a bit weary of exploring aquatic wonders. Also, few issues are more timely these days than AI’s future impact on society.

Although the twist-filled final chapters made my brain hurt a bit, the pain provided a memorable payoff. ( )

In his latest novel, Richard Powers looks at the state of the world through the lives of four characters. Todd and Rafi meet as students at an elite Chicago prep school. Todd comes from a wealthy family that has endowed the school; Rafi comes from the South Side and is a scholarship student. They bond over games, initially chess, then Go. Their friendship continues as they go to the same college. Todd is studying computer programming and Rafi studies literature and is a poet. At college, they meet Ina, a student who is from the South Pacific who becomes the love of Rafi's life. Before they graduate, Rafi and Todd have a falling out, and are estranged for most of the rest of their lives. In the "now" of the novel, Rafi and Ina are living on the remote South Pacific island of Makatea, an island ravaged by phosphate mining, its inhabitants diminished and impoverished, its environment destroyed. Todd is a billionaire tech mogul deep into Ai. He has been diagnosed with Lewey Bodies dementia, and is steep decline, facing his own death. He looks back on where technology has brought us:

"Neither Rafi nor I saw what was happening. No one did. That computers would take over our lives: Sure. But the way they would turn us into different beings?"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Sure they predicted personal, portable Encyclopedia Britannia's and group real-time teleconferencing and personal assistants that could teach you how to write better. But Facebook and WhatsApp and TikTok and Bitcoin and QAnon and Alexa and Google Maps and smart tracking ads based on keywords stolen from your emails and checking your likes while at a urinal and shopping while naked and insanely stupid but addictive farming games that wrecked people's careers and other neural parasites that now make it impossible to remember what thinking and feeling and being were really like back then? Not even close."

Neural parasites indeed!

The fourth important character is oceanographer and marine biologist Evelyne Beaulieu, who is much older than the other three. Interspersed with the stories of Todd, Rafi and Ina, we learn the history of diving, as we follow Evelyne's career over the 20th century and into the present. Along the way we are treated to psychedelic descriptions of underwater life: "The wildest assortment of Dr. Seuss creations." When diving, Evelyne, "felt like a Babe in Toyland, set loose in the greatest playground any child had ever seen."

As in most novels by Powers (one of my favorite authors), the book is a combination of great characters, good plot, science, and big ideas. His books are usually complex and thought-provoking, and this one is as well. With this book, there is a late twist which I found mind-boggling, and I'm still puzzling over what I just read.
Highly recommended.
And I liked this quote by Arthur Clarke:
"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean." ( )

The essence of this book is the friendship between Todd Keane and Rafi Young. Both grew up in dysfunctional families in Chicago in the late 20th century. Todd in a wealthy family, whose Dad was a pit trader and parents locked in a love/hate relationship. Rafi in a poor Black family, with divorced parents and a dad who insisted the Rafi work to achieve more than anyone else to overcome systemic racism. They meet at a private school, where Rafi won the Keane scholarship. The two become friends over gaming, first chess then the Chinese game of Go. Todd is a computer science nerd who loves the ocean because of a children's book about the ocean by Evelyne Beaulieu...a Canadian oceanographer. Rafi loves and reveres literature.

The story follows the two men and their shared love interest, sculptor Ina Aroita, through college in Illinois, to Todd's move to California, and Rafi and Ina's life on the French Polynesian island of Makatea. There is a side thread following Evelyn Beaulieu's diving career accompanied by lush, but anthropomorphized descriptions of undersea life. There are skips back and forth in time and the narrative viewpoint shifts.

Todd becomes a digital tycoon and experiments recklessly with artificial intelligence as his cognitive faculties are consumed by Lewey Body Dementia. His narration appears in italics and seems to be addressing an unidentified "you". He has a libertarian interest in seasteading the island of Makatea to create a floating city.

At times the story seems to meander and wander, but stick with it. There is a surprise ending which will entirely shift your understanding of the story. ( )