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World Hotels - Playing With the Grown-ups: A Novel
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List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $18.00
Your Save: $ 6.00 ( 25% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780385524612
ISBN: 0385524617
Label: Nan A. Talese
Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2008-04-08
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Release Date: 2008-04-08
Studio: Nan A. Talese
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Editorial Reviews:
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For Kitty, growing up at Hay House amongst bluebell woods and doting relations is heaven. But for her mother, the restless Marina, a bohemian beauty who paints and weeps with alacrity, this comfortable domesticity cannot provide the novelty and excitement she craves. Marina is utterly beguiling, but more often than not Kitty can only gaze on her antics with awe and toe-curling trepidation.
When Swami-ji, Marina’s Guru, sees Marina’s future in New York, the family relocates, leaving Kitty exiled in a colorless boarding school. Reprieve comes in the form of the Guru’s summons to the ashram; but then, just as Kitty is approaching enlightenment, she and Marina are off again, leaving for an England that is now fast and unfamiliar. This time no god, man, or martini can staunch Marina’s hunger for a happiness that proves all too elusive. And Kitty, turning fifteen, must choose: whether to play dangerous games with the grown-ups or begin to put herself first.
Playing with the Grown-ups is an enchanting novel about growing up in a loving, utterly chaotic household; it is also hilarious, heartbreaking, and scandalous. The offbeat and often comic adventures of the free-spirited heroines—Marina and Kitty alike—will remind readers of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. With her magnificent talent for storytelling and creating unconventional characters, Sophie Dahl ably carries on the literary legacy of her grandfather, the beloved children’s book author, Roald Dahl.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: enthralling. I simply didn't want this beautiful book to end
Comment: It's not fair. How can Sophie Dahl be the granddaughter of the genius Roald Dahl, a certified supermodel AND an amazing author? Well, it turns out that she's all three and you'll want to hate her for it but you can't. Her book is just too wonderful and girly and good! From English boarding to New York City to Indian ashrams and back to swinging 80s London - I was enthralled by the heroine and her coming of age journey living under the shadow of her glamorous bohemian mother. Dahl's distinctively British touch reminded me of Waugh and Mitford and if you're a fan of either you won't be disappointed with Playing with the Grown Ups! Read it! You'll love it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A tragically beautiful story.
Comment: Sophie Dahl has a real talent for story telling. This beautifully spun novel plunges head first into the exciting and utterly complicated life of Kitty, an adolescent girl; whose triumphs and tragedies lead her on the bumpy road to adulthood. This story is sprinkled with a cast of wonderful and quirky characters...from the ultimate guru, Swami-ji who at one point rules their lives to the Russian Romeo who longs after girls half his age, to the display of many eccentric men who enter and leave her mother Marina's life...this coming of age book is at once sparkling with wit and humor and immediately captivating in its innocence and warmth. Dahl's ability to create a setting is nostalgic and memorable every step of the way. Be it the English countryside and Hay House or the references she makes to New York; that imagery will be forever etched in my mind. She molds her words as though they were made of clay.
Marina's spontaneous and radical efforts to find happiness result in her uprooting her little family - Kitty, Sam, Violet and nanny Nora - from England to New York to the guru's Ashram and back to England. Kitty even has to suffer boarding school and the agonies of being an unpopular girl surrounded by snobs until the guru's vision eventually releases her back to the world. Kitty (aka Kit-Kat) has an unusual childhood...she is the child but also the adult in her world, covering for Marina and protecting her from Bestamama and the parade of drooling men who fall at her feet. Caught between wanting to break free into adulthood and hanging on to the responsible `good girl' that she is, she remains the glue that holds the family together. Marina on the otherhand is impulsive and rebellious and at once loveable although her relationship with Kitty more often resembles that of a friend than a mother figure; Kitty is her rock and Marina, Kitty's anchor. The love in this unusual little family cannot be overlooked. Marina's pride in her `little ones' is a beautiful thing. Kitty's curiosity, love for family and passion for romance are endearing and hilarious as we find her caught in a battle of the mind vs. the heart...still the 15-year old must decide her own fate...
Sophie has undoubtedly proven herself as a brilliant literary artist. With her funny imagination, vivid imagery and penchant for the unpredictable, her characters bounce off the pages ready to come alive. She has unquestionably inherited her grandfathers writing talent and firmly planted her feet as a novelist. I can't wait to recommend this book to every girl I know! Brilliant.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dahl Granddaughter is Thoroughly Engaging
Comment: Sophie Dahl's Playing With the Grown Ups begins in modern day New York, where Kitty is sleeping peacefully in bed with her husband. She then gets the dreaded middle-of-the-night phone call telling her that her mother, Marina, has been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. Kitty takes the next flight to England and revisits the wild youth she has tried so desperately to escape.
Playing With the Grown Ups consists largely of Kitty's flashbacks. Her childhood was a mad dance of constant change, uncertainty, and her mother's never-ending search for meaning. Kitty was a normal girl until she moved to New York to be with her mother, whose Guru Swami-ji had told her to relocate and take up a career in painting. Kitty tried to act grown up too, wearing her mother's clothes, partying, and experimenting with sex and drugs. Kitty and her family became deeply involved in a Hindu-inspired commune led by Swami-ji and delved deeply into spirituality.
But their new life in New York is short lived. Swami-Ji tells the family to leave New York to avoid imminent "dark times." Marina moves her family to London to start over yet again, but there life became significantly worse. Kitty became involved in drugs and hanging out with the bad kids. By the time Kitty was 15, Marina was doing hard drugs with her daughter and nearly died in Kitty's arms of an overdose. Kitty decided then and there to stop playing "grown-up" and put herself and her future first. She moved back to the United States to start a new life at a boarding school in Connecticut.
This novel was thoroughly engaging. The constant whims of Marina were amusing and sad at the same time. She was a loving mother, but incredibly selfish as well. I wanted to strangle Marina and tell her to put her children's needs before her own. It was frustrating to see how lost the woman was and what a foul influence she was on her children. What sort of mother serves drugs at her daughter's party? Kitty grew up in chaos and experimented with the dark side of life along the way. I felt sorry for her as she struggled to find herself and relieved when she found her way out of her dead-end lifestyle. Had she not, she may have been the one in the hospital from a nervous breakdown instead of Marina. I loved Dahl's fictional memoir format and the detail she put into the storyline. She made a story that could have been dull and depressing a comic read that's hard to put down. I only wish this novel was longer. You'll be touched by Kitty's bravery and strength as she overcomes obstacles and grows into an independent young woman as well.
by Jennifer Melville
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
Customer Rating:
Summary: I liked this book a lot
Comment: I devoured this book. I so enjoyed it. At first, I wanted Kitty's, later I felt such dread and sadness for her.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Coming of Age, in Bizarre Circumstances
Comment: Playing with Grown-Ups tells the coming of age story of a British girl, Kitty, with a troubled family. Kitty's family includes deeply loving grandparents, twin siblings, as well as a tremendously troubled single mother. Kitty's growth and development is clearly shaped by her mother's activities, which include falling in with a religious cult, acquiring, first, an alcoholic boyfriend, and later, a serious drug habit. Throughout the novel Marina, Kitty's mother behaves erratically and generally inappropriately. She is generally physically and/or emotionally absent from Kitty's life, and Kitty deeply craves her love and attention, which always seem to be directed elsewhere. All of this sounds like the stuff of a tragic documentary, and in many ways it is. The tale of Kitty's adolescence often reads like a runaway train. It's clear that Kitty is setting herself up for unfortunate consequences. It is always clear to the reader that some love and attention from Marina would likely change the course of Kitty's life, though that attention never comes. While Kitty's story is clearly unfortunate, the book is not all dreary. This is in many ways a funny book, with a humorous cast of characters, and there's mirth to add life to a sad tale.
While this is a book with some engaging attributes, it also has some significant problems. The characters are sympathetic; I found myself actively reading to find out what happened to Kitty. The story is engaging. Those praises aside, there are problems that outweigh the benefits. The ending of the story is completely predictably, and the author's use of forshadowing reveals the ending almost immediately. The writing is so peppered with pop culture references that it dates the text, and makes it more arduous to read than it should be. Other reviewers have described the writing as "clunky," and I would agree.
The two most significant problems, however, are that first, significant parts of this plot are entirely unbelievable. Second, a number of the most nuanced and important emotional parts of the plot are not part of the writing-- they're simply assumed, ignored. This is especially true of the interactions between Kitty and her mother when all of the major life changes are happening. I have certainly read other British fiction that incorporates these tactics: unbelievable plots, pop culture references (Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic series comes to mind), but other authors (like Kinsella) use these tactics far more effectively, and produce engaging, readable books. In no small part, I suspect this is because Kinsella, et. al. are writing books intended to be humorous, whereas Dahl is trying to write serious literature. Incorporating these devices simply doesn't work with the dark themes Dahl is trying to address.
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