Book Club: Let’s Talk About Adam Ross’s ‘Playworld’

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The book opens with a bang: “In the fall of 1980, when I was 14, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was 36, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.”

Set in New York in the 1980s, Adam Ross’s new novel, “Playworld,” tells the story of a young actor named Griffin as he navigates the chaos of the city, of his family and of being a teenager, and the dangers that swirl around each. Griffin works as a child-star on a hit TV show, but the job distracts from both his school work and his true passion: wrestling. The sport comes with its own agonies; the team’s coach sexually abuses several of the young wrestlers, including Griffin. It’s all a lot to deal with, especially for a kid, and the only one who seems to listen to him is Naomi, the very person he should avoid.

If this makes the book sound dour, it’s not. Although “Playworld” grapples with bleak material, it sparkles with Ross’s vivid eye and sardonic sense of humor. The result is a dark, off-kilter bildungsroman about one overextended teenager trying to figure himself out while being failed, continually, by every adult around him.

On this week’s episode, the Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses “Playworld” with his colleagues Dave Kim and Sadie Stein. You can follow along, and add your own comments to the discussion here.

Here are the books discussed in this week’s episode:

• “Playworld,” by Adam Ross

• “Mr. Peanut,” by Adam Ross

• “The Catcher in the Rye,” “Nine Stories,” “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction,” and “Franny and Zooey,” by J.D. Salinger

• “Long Island Compromise,” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

• “How Little Lori Visited Times Square,” by Amos Vogel, illustrated by Maurice Sendak

• “The Squid and the Whale,” directed by Noah Baumbach

• “The Goldfinch,” by Donna Tartt

• “Headshot,” by Rita Bullwinkel

• “The Copenhagen Trilogy,” by Tove Ditlevsen

• “Jakob von Gunten,” by Robert Walser

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.