PLAYGROUND by Richard Powers

Todd and Rafi are two very smart guys who meet in high school and bond over chess.  They remain very close friends in college, even after a woman enters the picture.  Then their paths diverge as Todd becomes addicted to software development and later founds a social media company that incorporates an idea provided by Rafi.  Todd becomes fabulously wealthy and begins developing AI, while Rafi’s great love is literature.  A totally separate storyline is that of Evelyne, whose father throws her into a pool with an early aqualung prototype.  This event propels her into oceanography, and her sections of the book are mind-boggling descriptions of the world that exists at the bottom of the sea.  Most of the earth is water, so that we land dwellers have no concept of the vast and mostly unexplored depths of our planet.  This fact is so obvious and yet so underappreciated.  Anyway, the ending of this novel was so puzzling to me that I had to read some other reviews and then reread a portion of the ending.  Todd provides some italicized narration addressed to an unknown entity, and I have to admit that I find italics annoying to read.  However, the difference between Todd’s narrative and the narrative in normal type is important to an understanding of the novel, and I missed that distinction entirely.  This book deserves a reread.