Playworld by Adam Ross

 

Started this yesterday in a coffeeshop, finished it tonight--last night ended up being unexpectedly social. It's ... really not a horrible book: The prose itself is solid; the characters all feel plausible, even if some are kinda obvious to the point of cliche, the fact the novel's set in like 1980s makes it reasonable the characters in the novel, including the first-person POV, not to figure out what's going on with them; the place and time feel right, consistent with my memories of at least the latter. There's plenty of wit and sparkle in the writing, and humor and joy--as well as grit and grime and teenagers (and the adults they're still depending on) behaving badly. The story, though (and given that it seems like an intentional *bildungsroman*, "story* is probably not the primary goal) is kinda bland, fragmented (picaresque seems also intentional, maybe connected to the *bildungsroman* thing) and mostly doesn't so much resolve as just stop. Given that the novel is like 500 pages, that's a lot of reading for so little real impact, it goes a long way to make a very small point.