Playground: A Novel

Todd Keane, an American billionaire who made his fortune in the tech industry, narrates the story of his life to an AI device. The book distinguishes his narration by using italics. Todd was recently diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. The condition is incurable, and he shares his memories with the AI device before he loses them. First, he describes walking home after watching a student production of The Tempest with his friend Rafi Young and Rafi’s girlfriend, Ina Aroita. Walking across campus, Ina (a woman from the Pacific Islands) saw snow for the first time.

Years later, Ina lives on the island of Makatea in the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia. She has lived on the island for four years with Rafi and their two children, “her crab boy Afa and her timid dancer Hariti” (5). Though Ina is of French Polynesian descent, she isn’t originally from Makatea. Her father was in the Army, and she was born in Hawaii and lived on various Army bases during her youth. Ina and Hariti comb the beach for interesting items. Hariti is horrified to find a dead albatross. Inside its rotted corpse, she sees “two fistfuls of plastic pieces” (7). Hariti buries the bird, and Ina takes the garbage home to use in an art project but isn’t sure why.

Todd tells his AI device about his past, beginning with his childhood. He was born on January 1, 1970, just after midnight. The local press hailed him as “First in Line for the New Decade” (9). He describes his parents’ “continuous war game” (10): They routinely goaded and hurt one another, though they never actually separated. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a stockbroker. Both had affairs and betrayed one another, which young Todd hated. He took solace in Lake Michigan, which was near his childhood home. Todd describes how he’s feeding all these memories (as well as everything else from his life) into the AI device as “crumbs of a life lived under surveillance in the digital fishbowl” (13).

Ina and Hariti return to their home and unpack their “riches.” Ina experiences a restless night, troubled by nightmares.

Todd recalls how his hypercompetitive father introduced him to board games. Many of these games were beyond Todd’s comprehension, but his father drilled him in strategy. When Todd began to win games of Chutes and Ladders, his father promised to buy him a book of his choosing.

Makatea is home to 82 people. The mayor is Didier Turi, a man who once dreamed of being a professional soccer player until two bad injuries scuttled his chances. A few decades earlier, the phosphate mines of Makatea made the island home to 3,000 people. Since the mines closed, the population dwindled, but natural life is beginning to return to the island.

Rafi Young lies asleep beside his wife, Ina. An African American man, Rafi was born and raised in Chicago. His father, a firefighter, fought with his mother about how to raise him. Rafi’s mother bought him a “flaming orange” coat to wear on his walk to school. The bright color helped her spot him from afar, but the other children mocked him. Rafi hated the coat; he lied to his mother that it was stolen. The missing coat caused the final fight between his mother and father; his father hit his mother, which caused her to leave him. Rafi still blames himself for his parents’ separation, which he believes began with “one little lie” about the coat (21). As he lies beside Ina many years later, he dreams again about the incident.

Todd remembers how his father allowed him to choose any book from the store. He selected Clearly It Is Ocean, a book about oceanography filled with “pictures of surreal sea life” (23). Todd’s father wasn’t impressed, but Todd was adamant. The book quickly obsessed him. The lush descriptions of ocean life allowed him to escape from the poisonous atmosphere at home, and he fell in love with the female author of the book. He wanted to “give [himself] to the ocean” (25), just like her. Todd’s father was unimpressed by his son’s desire to be an oceanographer. Now 57, Todd describes how he’s one of the world’s richest men. As he approaches death, however, he wants only “to be buried at sea” (26).

Makatea is one of the highest points in the Pacific. In 1896, France added Makatea to its growing empire, and the discovery of the island’s phosphates turned the previously unremarkable island into “precious real estate” (28). The phosphates were essential for use as fertilizers, so the European colonizers plundered the island and its resources to plant crops in previously unfertile ground. The phosphates of Makatea “would feed the world” (29). The island’s population boomed, but many of the Indigenous people were sent to work in the phosphate mines, where the hostile conditions harmed their health. They suffered while the Europeans profited. In 1966, the mines closed, and the industry vanished, collapsing the island’s population from thousands to less than 100. The island’s environment and natural life slowly began to return.

Todd describes how deeply invested he became in Clearly It Is Ocean, particularly in the book’s “mysterious ending,” which involved a colorful cuttlefish. Typically, Todd dissembled all the expensive toys his father bought for him to see how they worked. When he received an electronic pattern repetition toy, it reminded him of the cuttlefish. Taking this toy apart was the first step in his lifelong interest in computers. People and their emotions had always “puzzled” Todd. His parents bought him a computer, and he began to learn to code. Since that ancient computer, he marvels at how far technology has come. He speaks to an AI program cased inside a “little black monolith” that can remember everything for him (34).

Didier Turi speaks by phone to the president of French Polynesia. They discuss a deal that a US consortium is offering Makatea. Didier hates politics and never wanted to be mayor. Like many on the island, he assumed that his politically savvy predecessor, Jules Amaru, would “guide the island forever” (36). After Amaru died, people thrust Didier into the position because they trusted his lack of interest in politics. He was a popular sportsman and a “local hero.” Now, he has the misfortune of being mayor during one of the most consequential moments in the island’s recent history. Amaru’s son Hone once played on the rival soccer team and now runs a climbing outfitter on the island. Didier visits him to discuss the president’s intent to “lease Temao, Makatea’s ruined port,” to the consortium (39), which wants to use it to make and maintain modular floating-city parts. They hope to start the test phase within a year and promise that vast wealth will pour into the island.

Didier struggles to understand the true implications of the situation and worries that it represents “just more colonialism” (40). Hone is more relaxed. Next, Didier takes his motorcycle past the island’s solar plant, which the technically minded Manutahi Roa maintains. For Didier, solar power represents a return to Makatea’s natural past after the mining industry “all but killed the island” (41). After this, Didier contemplates visiting Widow Poretu. He has been having an affair with her after receiving tacit permission from his wife, Roti. After their struggles to conceive a child, Roti “had gone off sex altogether” (42), and she accepts that her husband has sexual needs. Didier recognizes that his shame is a result of the island’s recent adoption of Christianity during colonial rule, but he still struggles with the morality of his “emergency adultery.” Wishing that he had someone to talk to, wishing that he could give up his responsibility, he plans for how to share his news with the rest of the island.

Todd talks about the day of his diagnosis. He ignored the symptoms for a long time, but when magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) confirmed his condition, he was convinced since he “always trusted machines” more than people (46). He was diagnosed with incurable dementia with Lewy bodies. Todd has seen his life’s work “fulfilled beyond [his] wildest dreams” (47), so he feels oddly relieved. He knows that he has little time left, however, so he feels a need to wrap up his “loose ends.” He begins by recording everything, telling all his memories to the AI device.