The Hero of This Novel Is 14. His Married Girlfriend Is 36.

PLAYWORLD, by Adam Ross

Before “adulting,” there were grown-ups: a word even more squiggly, if you think about it, and one that in Adam Ross’s new novel, “Playworld,” takes on monstrous dimensions.

As quite a few novels have done in recent years, “Playworld” takes readers back to New York City during the waning, gentle but grayish days of the Carter administration, and watches through adolescent male eyes as America flips over to lurid Reagan technicolor.

“There you go again,” the winning candidate famously told the loser during their second debate. “As if it were off the cuff,” thinks the protagonist of “Playworld,” the pointedly named Griffin Hurt (symbol of urban protection, conjoined with the consequence of its failures). “I knew a canned line when I heard one.”

That’s because Griffin is, like Reagan, an actor. Gifted but conflicted, he has done commercials for Oscar Mayer bologna and Lipton Cup-a-Soup and been cast in a movie with Jill Clayburgh and Shelley Duvall. He puts on a cape to play Peter Proton in a popular Saturday morning TV series, a scientific spoof called “The Nuclear Family” — “before we fought bad guys, we’d summon our powers by yelling, ‘Split up!’” — and his wages go toward the tuition for his fancy Upper West Side private school.

Financially unstable, Griffin’s own nuclear family is also threatening to split up. His father, born Sheldon Hertzberg, is a probable philanderer and a bit of a sad sack: a less successful actor who brags about his voice-over work for movies like “Star Wars” and “Superman,” and about the free checking and savings accounts he receives from the bank where he’s a spokesman. Griffin’s mother, Lily, is a former professional dancer who now teaches ballet and Pilates, and there’s an oft-swatted away younger brother, Oren.