Playworld

The biographical fallacy—the assumption that fiction comes directly from the author's own life—is full of dangers, but nevertheless I was not at all surprised to learn that Adam Ross was a child actor and champion wrestler in his New York youth, much like Griffin Hurt, the main character of his new, long-in-the-making novel. The sheer density of knowledge and understanding about his particular life, in that particular time and place, feel like they could come from nowhere but experience: this is a book that feels lived. Recounting a tumultuous and transformative year in Griffin's young life, dominated by the adults who use him to work out their own needs in the style of the Carter/Reagan era, it has the bagginess of life, of details included only because they happened, but the intensity of it too. It's immersed in the details of its time and it's a throwback in style too, an old-fashioned coming-of-age story that makes you feel you have grown up with Griffin too.