_Playground Zero_ relates the experiences of the Raysons and the dissolution of the family following their move to Berkeley, CA, in the late 1960s. Although the novel is narrated from multiple perspectives, it is twelve-year-old Alice who emerges as its protagonist. Ultimately, _Playground Zero_ is her story, driven by her collisions with—and survival of—the chaotic social forces unleashed in Berkeley during that period.
On one level, the novel is an indictment of the 60s counterculture, specifically its failure to provide an alternative to the hypocrisy and violence of a society that routinely victimizes the vulnerable. As an adolescent girl, Alice often finds herself on the receiving end, the victim of the game to which the novel’s title alludes. The concept of the “game” is one of the book’s organizing metaphors and we repeatedly see Alice in situations where she thinks she knows the rules, only to have them broken or changed in the middle of the game. For example, early on in the novel Alice’s brother Curt reluctantly allows her to tag along with him and his new acquaintance Sammy. The boys dare Alice to trespass into a private yard by climbing over a fence. Alice assumes that “[o]nce she’d proven she could, Sammy would accept her” (53). She succeeds, but instead of winning their approval she is abandoned by Sammy and her brother. This unfortunate pattern recurs throughout the novel. Seeking companionship and acceptance, Alice instead becomes more and more isolated, increasingly estranged from her family and yet unable to sustain a sense of belonging with her new peers. Perhaps the ultimate emblem of Alice’s alienation is when she is raped by an acquaintance, one of the “comrades” from People’s Park—and upon returning home, seems incapable of sharing her traumatic experience with her mother. Baffled by Alice’s silence, her mother remarks, in a moment of painful irony, “I do hope you find real companionship someday. It's so important to one’s happiness” (332).
But Alice is not just a victim, and the novel is much more than a #metoo narrative. Abandoned in a strange yard, she explores its marvelous tree house and plays a game of gin rummy with Tree Frog, its whimsical owner; frustrated by the racial tensions and routine disruptions in public school, she escapes to the realms of fantasy literature; left to her own devices by the uber-progressive “open academy” in which her parents eventually enroll her, she finds refuge in the Central Library and friendship with Fernwood the librarian. Her character is marked by curiosity and a desire to explore. If, like the Finns of her imagination, she is caught in a war that she does not understand, she is a survivor, the worn Finnish army jacket that she appropriates an apt symbol of her veteran status.
Though its literary merit is indisputable, the novel is at times difficult to read and not without its flaws. Fastidious critics may find fault with stylistic infelicities; plotwise, others may question the apparent abundance of loose ends. After all, why introduce such a wealth of characters and perspectives only to leave so many of them undeveloped, at best tenuously connected to Alice’s story? In this, the novel is perhaps only being truthful: so many connections turn out to be fleeting, and with the best of intentions—even psychedelic assistance—class and racial divisions are persistent and difficult to transcend in the long run. What if Alice had developed a more lasting relationship with Tree Frog? What if she hadn’t dropped her Telegraph Avenue group, Valerie, Jim, Joe, and Chris? What if she had succeeded in winning over her black classmates Denise and Jocelyn? To echo one of the narrator’s favorite phrases, “Who can say?” One thing, however, is for certain: Sarah Relyea’s debut novel repays careful reading and promises exciting things to come.
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