PLAYWORLD

A teen actor in 1980 Manhattan grapples with the consequences of fame, his eccentric family, and the advances of a family friend.

This long-awaited follow-up to Mr. Peanut (2010) and the well-received story collection Ladies and Gentlemen (2011) chronicles a season of upheaval in the life of a child actor on the cusp of adulthood. It offers a blast to the past in the vein of Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire (2015) and the existential angst of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (2013), but lacks much in the way of pathos. The book is written from the point of view of Griffin Hurt, an otherwise ordinary prep school student whose actor father pressured him into show business. What’s meant to make Griffin unique is his role as popular Peter Proton on an NBC show called The Nuclear Family, but we barely see any of those experiences. Instead, the show and its accompanying fame serve as an albatross around Griffin’s neck that interferes with his true passion: wrestling for the school team. Meanwhile, Griffin’s parents are distant and self-absorbed, while his younger brother, Oren, although personable, mostly exists as a sounding board and partner in crime for Griffin. Instead, Ross pulls his inciting incident straight from The Graduate with the introduction of Naomi Shah, an older friend of Griffin’s parents whose unhappy marriage and impulsive tendencies lead her toward predation. As Griffin lies through sessions with the family therapist and his storied career threatens to derail his own ambitions, his avoidance mirrors the novel’s narrative pitfall: plenty of movement but no real change. With no true villain and nowhere for the story to go, readers may find themselves anxiously awaiting a climax that never comes.

An intriguing coming-of-age story that’s rich in atmosphere but falls short on resolution.