Playground: A Novel

Throughout Todd and Rafi’s lives, games are a recurring motif. For Todd, board games represent the lessons about competitiveness he learned from his father, who introduced him to increasingly complex games; as soon as Todd could reliably beat his father at a game, they’d move on to something more complex. Once Todd could consistently beat his father at chess, they had little place else to expand. Todd was on the precipice of expanding into business (a game his father obsessed over), but Michael died in a car crash before Todd could realize this vision. Even before his father’s death, however, Todd had passed along his love of competitive games to his friend Rafi. Like Todd’s father, Rafi’s father imbued in him a relentlessly competitive spirit. Rafi learned many games from Todd and then introduced Todd to Go, an ancient and complex strategic game. Importantly, Rafi and Todd arrive at Go under their own volition. Go is their game, which they learn to play together. It represents their friendship, even if they inherited the competitiveness that drives them from their fathers. For these two young men, Go becomes a symbol of their friendship and of how they both feel the burden of their fathers’ influence.