Genre: Literary Fiction, Eco-fiction Published: W. W. Norton & Company, September 2024
My Rating: 2.5/5 stars
“The world was bigger, stranger, richer, and wilder than I had a right to ask for.”
I’m usually able to tell why a widely popular book is popular, even if I personally didn’t like it. with this one, I’m slightly baffled and I honestly question whether I’ve actually read the same book as other people did.
Here’s a little history on my experiences with Powers’ writing. I loved The Overstory and unironically think that thing is a modern classic. Then I read Bewilderment (with high expectations) and just really didn’t get along with it. Playground was a repeat of that experience: I should love these books on paper, but some element of the execution is like nails on a chalkboard to me. I went in-depth into Bewilderment, and many of my issues are similar.
The Good:
It’s no secret that Richard Powers know how to write. On a sentence-by-sentence-level I’m often awestruck, and his descriptions of the natural world show his passion for the subject of climate and conservation. Technically, his craftmanship is undeniable. As is the ending that I’ve seen so many people rave about. I wasn’t as wowed or surprised as some reviewers were, as this twist has definitely been done many times within books with similar themes, but it was well-done regardless.
The Bad:
The point of “having seen it before” brings me to the bad; this felt like a rehash of much Powers greatest hits. Specifically Overstory... Same themes, same tricks, same flaws. And any flaw repeated, becomes more grating by the dozen. In short: Powers’ writing is very heavy handed on the themes he addresses (on a very shallow-level, unfortunately); “AI-bad”, “Science-Bad-Nature-Good”, “Overthrow-The-Rich”… The way these slogans are thrown around (by a very privileged, extremely rich man himself) comes across as very moralizing, virtue-signaling and at times even patronizing to the reader. Call me petty, but my personal tolerance for that is quite low.
What might also throw some readers off is the glacial pacing and the disjointed feeling of the different story during the first half of the novel. I found myself very bored during this part and judging from opinions of friends and other reviewers, I’m not alone.
The Ugly:
Even lower than my tolerance for pandering and moralizing, is my tolerance for emotional manipulation of the reader. Especially when it comes to using illness, grief or trauma as a tool for that manipulation. Powers did it in Bewilderment with a grieving, autistic child. He does it again with Playground when using Lewy-body dementia as a major plot device. Yes, I’m saying “plot device” intentionally, as that’s what its inclusion felt like to me, rather than an authentic attempt to explore this theme in-depth. Again; call me petty all you want, but devastating, debilitating illnesses that ruin real-life-lives feel out of place as “side-notes” to explain a characters memory loss and allow for a twist to work. Granted: there’s some exploration in regards to what the prospect of losing his memory and bodily autonomy does to Keane, but it falls far-far short of where it needs to be for the level of praise this book got.
I have no fundamental problem with authors writing “beyond what they know” (e.g. white authors writing black protagonists, able-bodies authors writing disabled characters, majorities writing minorities etc.), but you damn well be careful to do the experience justice somehow. Caricature-Black-Guy Rafi and Stereotypical-amnesiac Todd just weren’t that for me…
As always, I’m just some woman on the internet, so if you had a different experience with this book: more Power to you. (see what I did there 😊 ) With a book this beloved, I feel like there’s merit in shedding light on the other side too.
You can find this book here on Goodreads to check it out for yourself.
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