So, who’s read Playground? What did you think of it?
The thing I really wanted to discuss was the book’s ending. When do you think the real timeline deviates from the way Todd would have liked it to have been? What did you think of the revelation at the end of the book? Personally, my mind was blown.
If anyone’s interested, my BookBrowse review is here: Book Review: Playground by Richard Powers
…but it doesn’t address the ending, since that would be too spoilerific.
I love the multiple storylines throughout the book. Richard Powers has that unique ability to bring the wider unknowns of our inner and external environments into sharper focus. AI can only extrapolate the data it absorbs. It can not differentiate between the true life lived and the life regretted. AI then can change history to false narratives. It is only a human heart that can truly know oneself.
@kim.kovacs I just finished it - wow! I did not expect that twist and was shocked. I thought it was a great twist, it gave the book a whole new meaning and might make it more interesting to reread as well.
It did make me sad in a way, and I found it troubling that 3 close friends would never be able to reconcile.
Right?!? Quite the twist. I’d definitely like to reread it knowing what was really going on. I certainly didn’t pick up any clues along the way, although I imagine they were there.
Same I didn’t really pick up on it until it was happening / obvious, although I appreciate that it plays on the trope of disparate story lines coming together.
Ok I’m finished and I have thoughts. But I want to understand if I think the same as you guys. Can we really spoil, just come right out and say what happened? And I have questions too. For me it isn’t 100% clear.
Hi @Anne_Glasgow! Very much looking forward to hearing your thoughts. It’s definitely OK to put spoilers in this thread; the public has been warned! If you’re still uncomfortable with putting spoilers in, though, you can use the spoiler tag to blur out the text. When you start your post, if you click the little gear icon in the toolbar above the text (right side) you’ll see a “Blur Spoiler” option. This puts spoiler tags in, and allows you to type your text in between them. Or you can insert them yourself, by enclosing the word spoiler between brackets - [ and ] - and then when you’re done, it’s /spoiler enclosed in brackets. So instead of the word “spoiler” I’ve substituted “spoil-er” in the example below:
[spoil-er]This text would be blurred if the hyphens are eliminated.[/spoil-er]
It looks like this: This is a hidden spoiler.
Hope that helps!
Thanks Kim. So here goes.
I read the end of the story to be Keane 2.0 or an AI that had been narrating all the italic parts. I wasn’t surprised because at about 50% I went for my morning walk and was pondering why he was the only character in italics. That seemed to me to be the obvious answer based on his computer skills and interests.
What I found puzzling was the Rufi story. Was he alive or dead? I didn’t bother to go back to see if we were always told by/through Keane about his death. Seems like Ina told us mixed accounts also. So, was he dead or alive on the island?
The island. I suppose the outcome was not surprising and that Ina kind of got to control it was good. Kept it from going totally commercial.
I thought the burial at sea in the arty boat was a step too far. It was just hokey.
I also wasn’t surprised by Elizabeth. She was my favorite character and I loved how boldly she followed her intellectual curiosity and her passion for the ocean. I’m glad her husband was such a good father because nurturing kids was never going to be her strong suit.
General thoughts: any of my good reading buddies will tell you one thing they know about me is that I don’t like books told out of order. That was a big strike for me in this book. I was between 30-40% before I sort of began to understand each of the storylines. I’m willing to work to understand a book but this just felt like intentional confusion to me. Bouncing between characters is one thing but then bouncing around in time inside each character’s storyline is more than a bit much for my liking.
Ok, bring on your thoughts, comments or reactions @kim.kovacs and @nick. This is definitely a book that will thrive by being somewhat dissected. My understanding would thrive from a second reading but—not gonna happen. 
My understanding was actually that the italics were the only ‘factual’ parts of the story, told from Keane’s perspective in order to instruct the AI and give it context, and that anything not in italics was the AI’s story that it was writing for Keane.
That’s why Elizabeth, Ina, Rafi, and Keane conveniently all end up on the same island. That’s why the burial is over the top - because it’s written by an AI to make Keane feel better.
In the book’s reality (outside of the AI written story), Rafi dies young, and Ina inherits the $1,000,000 from Rafi. The whole sea steading plotline is made up by the AI as well.
The more I think about it, the sadder the book gets haha. There’s a lot to unpack around how people sacrifice their relationships for their work.
@Anne_Glasgow & @nick - And that’s exactly why I wanted to discuss the book. I felt like I thought I had it figured out, but it was only in the last few pages of the book. I feel like I need to reread it, now that I know the twist, to see where the clues were. Mind-blowing for sure!
Ok, here’s the (friendly!) pushback.
Ina grew up on the island and she married Rafi so that would give them reliable reasons to be there. The real Keane ended up there because he needed Rafi, his only real friend, at life’s end. Otherwise no one would see to his proper burial.
Ina inherited Keane’s money because he loved her unrequitedly. Plus he had lost track of Rafi so Ina was his next best friend.
Elizabeth is the only one who I can’t see with a direct tie to the island but she had traveled everywhere and it certainly isn’t a surprise she would want to end her life surrounded by water.
Oh wait! Was her boat captain the same as one she had in her professional life?
Ack!!! I really feel this book needs to be read a second time.
I’m not at all sure Keane the AI is a reliable narrator. I’m also not sure Rafi is dead at the end. I’m open to more thoughts.
Yeah I agree that it’s worth a second read and reasonable people can disagree, that’s the beauty of interesting books, particularly this one where it’s not spelled out completely.
I think the main point we interpreted differently is that the italics are Keane talking / writing to the AI (not Keane 2.0 or an AI) and the non-italics is the story the AI wrote. So anything in italics is Keane’s real world experience / ‘what actually happened’ from Keane’s POV, and anything not in italics is pure fiction generated by the AI. Keane is asking the AI to write him a story to make him feel better about how his and his friend’s lives turned out.
If the italics are the AI in some ways it becomes more interesting that the AI was telling a bleaker story.
I agree with you that likely either way Ina was going to inherit much of Keane’s wealth.
We are told several times at the end about the story being told to a “grandson” with Keane being the grandfather? I think this is probably the key to who is telling the story. I think now that you have expanded your thinking @nick that my thoughts would be that Keane started the story and the AI took over when Keane was no longer capable. Afterall the AI would consider itself to be Keane, no?
Because of the confusion in the timelines I’m not sure when we knew that Rafi had been trolling Keane’s program and when Keane/ AI knew it was Rafi.
Obviously Rafi had to be alive to get the settlement from Keane but I could totally see him having Ina perpetrate the death letter just to get Keane off his tracks. The timelines contain clues that are super tangled in real time.