When people say that the ending of a movie, book, show ruined the whole thing, I rarely agree with them. There are some rare exceptions, looking at you Game of Thrones, but for the most part if I enjoy 90% – 95% of a story then ending being a bit underwhelming does not taint the rest of it for me. It’s about the journey, not the destination is what I say. And I really enjoyed the journey of Playground, but I think the destination is too much for me to ignore. Unfortunately, I cannot get into the details of why the end of this book bugged me so much without spoiling it, so a lot of this review will be blocked out.
Playground has a few different narrators, but the main one is Todd Keane. Todd starts out as a young boy, the only child of a wealthy trader in Chicago. Todd’s chapters are a recounting of his life from his older self and written in the style of a letter to a friend. He describes his life as a young boy with a disinterested mother and a mostly disappointed father. His parents are both kind of a mess, and they’re so distracted by their own issues that the only real attention he gets is pressure from his father to succeed and be more like him. Todd is sent to an elite private school where he meets his future best and only friend, Rafi Young. Rafi, the son of a bus driver in South Chicago, bonds with Todd over a mutual love for games of strategy.
It has to be said that Rafi is Black and growing up in the 70’s/80’s in Chicago. There are some chapters from Rafi’s point of view. Richard Powers is white and lived in the suburbs of Chicago until his family moved to Thailand for his father’s work when he was 11. Is he the right person to be giving this perspective? Probably not. Rafi has a lot of the hallmarks (or perhaps more accurately, stereotypes) you might expect from a middle-aged white man writing a character like this. As a white dude myself, I’m probably not the one to analyze this too deeply but wanted to give fair warning to anyone considering this book. [Spoilers start now.]
Todd and Rafi become very close friends. They obsess first over games of chess, and eventually Go. Yes, those are both games where the players’ pieces are black or white. Sorry, I’m getting off track again. Rafi is very guarded about his home and personal life but begins to open up to Todd as they move in together at college. Rafi challenges Todd and vice versa, but they have a falling out a few years after graduating. Todd goes off to create a site/app called Playground, which is essentially a proto-Reddit, and Rafi goes onto graduate school and the world of academia.
The other large chunk of the story is sent in modern day on Makatea, an island in French Polynesia. Rafi moves there with Ina, who he and Todd met while they were in college. The island only has about 80 residents, though it was once a large community as it was discovered to be a rich source of Phosphorus. Makatea was over-mined and much of the land was damaged. The mines eventually closed, and the population dwindled. Now, a new company is seeking to use Makatea as the hub for a business attempting to make floating towns in the ocean. The people of Makatea are given the option to allow this or veto the proposal. Allowing it would bring jobs, a new school, hospital, and many other conveniences to the remote island, but residents are justifiably skeptical after they harldy benefited from the phosphorus mining operation.
The residents agree to vote on the issue, but another layer is added when Rafi discovers that the majority owner of the company is none other than his old friend, Todd Keane. Rafi is convinced that Todd knows he and Ina live on the island, and that Todd’s interest is due to their feud. Rafi tries to convince the other residents to vote against the proposal, but the vote passes, and they are alerted that Todd is already on his way to Makatea to oversee the project. Todd, meanwhile, has been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. He bounces back between periods of perfect clarity and hours spent almost in a fugue state. Rafi is correct that Todd does know about his and Ina’s life on Makatea, but his motivations aren’t nefarious. He has no family to pass his fortune onto, and he is looking to reconcile with Rafi and use his fortune to help preserve Makatea and the environment around it.
As he arrives at Makatea, it is revealed that Todd hasn’t been writing a letter, but actually feeding parts of his life into an AI. Rafi died in Chicago years before. He never married Ina and moved to Makatea. Every part of Rafi and Ina’s narrative after the end of their friendship with Todd was a story generated by the AI to give Todd a happier ending to his life. He does actually leave his money to Ina, who does live on Makatea, but the rest of her story in the book from college until then was all generated by the AI. To be blunt, this is fucking bullshit. It’s no better than the twist of “it was all a dream”, or “it was all just in the imagination of a child with a snow globe.” It’s hack writing, and I’m surprised a Pulitzer Prize winning author would resort to it. If the author’s intent is to show how convincing AI can be and the dangers inherent, he failed. If the intent is to say that AI can produce great works of literature, he failed. The only aspect of it that really works for me is the dying billionaire desperately trying to write a happier ending for his own life.
There are still portions of this book that I really liked, one of which even brought some tears to my eyes. I think Powers can write some beautiful stories, and I am trying to not let the reveal I described above ruin that. I vacillate between giving this book 1 star and giving it 4 stars. I am landing somewhere in the middle and giving it a 3.
