Playground

This is my third Richard Powers novel. All three I've read primarily because of their placement on the Booker Prize longlist. While I greatly respected the two I read before, I was unable to really connect while I was reading them, and forgot them very shortly after. I had much better success with Playground, but in all honesty, this might have more to do with me as a reader than with the book itself.

For years now, I've continued reading when I just didn't feel like it. I felt like something was wrong with me if I wasn't reading, and so I pushed through dozens of books, my eyes scanning the pages, but not really connecting. Recently, after telling myself for much of that time I was going to be more deliberate with my reading, I actually followed through, and really started to slow down and absorb the books. The irony is that by slowing down, I seem to be reading more. So, while I can say, Playground is the best of Powers' novels I have read, I honestly cannot say that it's really any better or worse, just that I was personally more engaged and that it's stuck with me longer than the others had. Maybe that's what reading is for all of us, the right books at the right time, and ratings are asinine. But I continue to digress.

Powers tackles quite a bit in Playground. Honestly, the set-up for the actual story really takes over half of the book, but most of that feels interesting and forward moving. There are a number of characters, cultures, technologies, and ideas that need to be unpacked and explored through backstory. Powers manages to pull all of these seemingly unrelated threads into a finale that works, though is perhaps overwrought. As expected, the depictions of nature are gorgeously rendered and left me running to the Internet to learn more about some of the wildlife and places Powers named.

Perhaps the biggest critique I imagine Playground will face is in Powers' diverse cast. At times, the author feels out of touch with the characters he inhabits. Even his depictions of college students felt off, cramming randomly strewn profanity into their mouths at odd times. This section is also where the story meanders a bit too long, getting lost in a part of the backstory that could've easily been trimmed significantly. Lastly, the ending surprised me, and that's a feat as I generally have a pretty fair guess of where a story is going, but I don't know that this conclusion really worked for me. It will definitely leave some readers fuming, I promise.

Given Powers' track record–every novel he's written since Americans were admitted into the Booker Prize has been listed–I suspect I'll be reading another of his books in three to four years. That is assuming the world will then be in a state where such things will matter.