There Are No Small Parts

A child actor comes of age in 1980s Upper Manhattan in Adam Ross’s novel.

MOST child actors aren't taught how to act," Ron Howard once told an 'M interviewer. "They're sort of taught how to perform. They're like trained animals." Mr.

Howard, who starred as the grade-school-age scamp Opie on "The Andy Griffith Show," exempted himself from the generalization-his father introduced him to the Stanislavski method at a young age and he felt empowered to personalize his roles. But it sums up the technique of Griffin Hurt, the 14-year-old child star who narrates Adam Ross's charming heap of a novel "Playworld."

Whether he's playing Peter Proton on the Saturday morning superhero series "The Nuclear Family" or delivering TV commercial taglines, Griffin's gift is for detachment: "To fake faking it.

To be at a twice remove. I could cry at will but feel nothing, feel everything but give nothing away." The talent makes him an oddity among children his ageand irresistible to adults whose desires he's learned to accommodate.

One of these adults is Naomi Shah, a rich, lonely housewife who becomes infatuated with Griffin and plays a recurring part in the winding story of his maturation. "Playworld" takes place in 1980 and 1981 on New York City's Upper West Side.

Griffin's father is a voice actor and B-list Broadway performer while his mother, a former dancer, teaches ballet. Every weekend the Hurts travel downtown for appointments with the family therapist and they're popular invitees at Long Island soireesthrown by wealthier friends.

The novel's milieu produces a throwback atmosphere that Mr.Ross does not discourage-he's fully aware that he's stepped into the Manhattan playworld of Joseph Heller and Woody Allen, but he's a spry, funny, inventive writer on his own terms and the novel rarely seems cowed by its influences.