Sea Library

1. What’s it about?

A computer scientist, a poet, an artist and a diver all meet in one way or another and discover the power of friendship, imagination and obsession on the frontier of our last wild and largely unknown place on Earth – the Ocean.

2. What kind of sea is inside?

The life-changing sea. The underwater sea. And the sea as both the mythical and scientific beginnings of our world. Also, sadly, the threatened sea.

3. What I loved?

Every few years, if you are lucky, you encounter a book that has the potential to transform you more profoundly than others. Oscar Wilde called them his golden books. I envision a book like that as another kind of bible, a name I have stolen from a friend. Richard Powers’ “Playground” is now my new blue bible. I loved the way how the writer weaves storylines together in a glimmering fabric, how the possibility of diving deep evolves in front of reader’s eyes and a mind-blowing underwater world reveals itself in its full splendour. I loved how some of the characters consume books. I loved how nearly everything I read was connected to a tiny island threatened by progress. And I cannot forget the fact that protagonist’s mind, once envisioning and creating seedlings for social media and artificial intelligence, was losing his own memory day by day by day and tried to tell the story as long as he was able to. I caught myself taking up pace through this big and beautiful book in fear that the voice I’m listening to doesn’t have much time left and if I would slow down, last pages could be blank.

4. What surprised me?

Being transported to a time where Sylvia Earle, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Rachel Carson live and work – they are present in the book and the change they ignite can be felt in a vivid present tense.

5. What have I put into my pocket?

The part where Emily discover’s her writer’s voice. If you have a writer’s block, please, read it again and again and you might get back to the joy of exploring and telling stories to others with the energy of a teenager who has discovered what she loves more than anything else in the world.

6. Cool fact about the author?

Richard Powers worked as a programmer, until one day in 1980 he saw the photograph “Young Farmers” (1914) by August Sander at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and was so inspired that he quit his job two days later to write a novel about the people in the photograph. Powers spent the next two years writing the book, “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance”, which was published by William Morrow in 1985. Another cool fact – Powers won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “The Overstory”. This year, “Playground” was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Richard Powers might have super powers…

7. How did it arrive at the Sea Library?

As a review copy from the publisher.

Powers, Richard. Playground. Hutchinson Heinemann, 2024