Product Description

Kitty's mother, Marina, is both utterly beguiling and terrifyingly embarrassing, and more often than not Kitty can only gaze on her antics with awe and toe-curling trepidation. But as Kitty grows up it becomes clear that perhaps Marina isn't the most exemplary of parents, and that sometimes a girl might have to put herself first. Sophie Dahl writes with a keen eye, a warm heart and wonderful lyricism about a coming-of-age that's quite unlike any other.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #147902 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
'Everything a coming-of-age novel should be: honest, raw, heartbreaking and empathetic' Glamour 'Sparkling, poignant, beautiful - I loved it' Cecelia Ahern 'Lyrical, knowing and stylish' Elle 'A lush, rhapsodic coming-of-age novel ... somewhere between Absolutely Fabulous, I Capture the Castle and Hideous Kinky' Time Out

The Independent
'Really entertaining and amusingly written.'

Gloss Magazine
`Dahl writes with wit and confidence, the hapless but not hopeless Kitty is an appealing narrator and, although Marina is certainly not the first kookily irresponsible mother in fiction, she's convincingly charismatic ... very promising'

Customer Reviews

You won't want this novel to end.
I received this book as a gift and have to admit it is probably not something I would have ended up buying for myself.

Firstly I am not a huge Roald Dahl fanatic - I read one of his novels as a child and found it entertaining enough but never felt a great urge to read any more after that; secondly the fact that Sophie Dahl is his granddaughter kind of smacked of nepotism to me - just because he was a writer then she should be able to string words together? She is an ex-model and we all know about their dubious ability for writing (anyone remember Naomi Campbell's Swan for instance?).

Well I have to say that I am so glad I WAS bought this novel and that I was completely WRONG about the talents of Ms Dahl as a writer. When I started reading 'Playing with the Grown-ups' I did not want to put it down or indeed for it to end.

Telling the story of Kitty, whose idyllic childhood living with her grandparents is torn apart when her bohemian mother Marina becomes fixated with a questionable religious guru, the story follows Kitty from her muddled pre-adolescence through to her teens as she is pulled from pillar to post by her mother's various wacky life choices.

Beautifully told, Dahl's novel reminded me in places of the sharp observatory wit of Augusten Burroughs, with a style similar to Martha O'Connor's The Bitch Goddess Notebook and in places the heartbreakingly good White Oleander by Janet Fitch. This is one book by an ex-model which you certainly should make time to read.

fun and a bit sad
Like many others I wasn't really expecting much, but I really enjoyed this book. It was an easy read, good for my daily commute. It has likable characters and sends you back to the early 90s. Good read.

Slightly wacky but enjoyable
I didn't quite know what to expect from this book, but it turned out to be a very enjoyable read. Difficult to define what exactly caught my imagination as the story was quite meandering in places, (although the past and current events were interwoven very nicely) and in fact it felt that it came to a bit of an abrupt end. However it really kept my attention and some of the characters are really compelling. The fact that by the end I wanted to read more about how the characters developed and their lives continued probably sums up why I enjoyed this book.