I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the book review

this week we have our monthly book club episode. And as always, M.J. Franklin is hosting a

discussion this time about the novel Play World by Adam Ross, which came out earlier this year. I'm going to hand this off to him.

Hello and welcome to another book club episode of the Book Review podcast. I'm M.J. Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review, and for this

month's Book Review Book Club, we're talking about Playworld by Adam Ross. We chose this book

as our book club pick because I was feeling selfish and I was feeling FOMO, and I wanted to read

this book. I feel like I had seen this everywhere. It came out at the beginning of the year. It was very

buzzy. It has this bright yellow cover. So I would see people holding it on the subway. I would see

it in bookstores. And then I was doing this bookstore adventure with a friend and she pointed to it and was like,

I just finished reading that. And I was like, what is going on? Now is my turn. I have to read it. And I want to talk with someone about it. Let's make it a book clip. And that is what we are here to do today. And speaking of talking about it with other people, I have in the studio two of my incredible colleagues. They are both fellow book review editors. They are returning book clubbers. We have Dave Kim and Sadie Stein. You may remember them both from our Intermetzo episode, which is when

they were both here most recently. Dave, Sadie, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Welcome back.

Thanks. Happy to be here. Glad to be back. We got the band back together.

That's right. Before we jump into the conversation, I want to, as always, share some admin notes up top.

First, at the end of the

episode, we will reveal our May Book Club book, so stay with us to the end if you want to find out

what we're reading next. And second, there will be spoilers in this conversation. This is a book

that reveals quite a lot, even in the first few pages, but if you haven't read the book yet and you want to go in fresh, pause the episode, read the book, then come back to us. Or if you've already read the book

and you don't care about spoilers, I say, let's do it. Let's jump in. To get started, could

someone give us a brief elevator pitch synopsis of what is Playworld about? I can take a

whirl, MJ. Playworld is a coming-of-age novel about a 14-year-old

boy named Griffin. He's growing up in New York City in 1980. He's a child actor on a hit TV show,

and he begins a romantic relationship with a married woman who's more than two decades as

...