Playground by Richard Powers

The Overstory by Richard Powers is one of the landmark novels of the past decade. It is a love letter to the wonderfulness of trees, is grounded in science and animist thought and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2019. We've considred reading it several times, but the over 500 page length makes us hesitate. Instead, let's read and discuss the equally magical and shorter recent work by Powers. His novel Playground was published in 2024 and is at once a portrait of a three-way friendship and a cyberpunk thriller. It again takes the environment as its subject, with a specific focus on the sea and the Caribbean. Oceanographer Evelyne Beaulieu, one of several characters in the novel, plays hide-and-seek with octopuses and tag with pygmy seahorses and feels as if she's been "set loose in the greatest playground any child had ever seen." But she is also concerned by the changes she's witnessed over the years — including reefs and species that have been decimated. Power's book is as brilliant on land as it is undersea, and as dizzyingly wise about technology as it is about island culture, capitalism and ecology. He writes with erudition and electrifying beauty on everything from the toil of cleaner shrimps to the brain structure of manta rays, the playfulness of fish and the sex life of corals. The novel brims will love of humanity and the environment. It is 380 page and is available in local libraries and online.