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Playing With The Grown Ups
by
Sophie Dahl
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-cur...more
285 pages
Published
2007
by Bloomsbury
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Frothy and fizzy like champagne punch with perfectly round scoops of orange creme sherbet floating in it---and a few extra shots of extremely potent brandy.
A quick read.
A quick read.
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Oh there is a genre of book I do love. Once upon a time at Hastings in Jefferson City, Missouri, a newly licensed 16 year-old braved the two-lane traffic of Missouri Blvd. to make her way to the biggest bookstore within a thirty mile radius. Upon the "HARD BACK NEW RELEASES" there was a lovely book, a photograph in hues of blue with silver writing: By the Shore, by Galaxie Craze. Such a silly name, yes, but the book was amazing, voicing priviate thoughts I'd had and never dared admit to anyone,...more
Aug 17, 2008
Brittany
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Fans of White Oleander
Recommended to Brittany by:
British Glamour Magazine
How I Came To Read This Book: I read about it in British Glamour magazine and ordered it from amazon.ca.
The Plot: Kitty is 11 years old as the book kicks off, and living with her artistic mother, infant twin siblings, and grandparents in a beautiful English country home. The next four years of her life however, are mired by her mother's erratic behaviour that takes them to New York, a spiritual Ashram, and back to a darker London then either has experienced previously. Essentially the book follo...more
The Plot: Kitty is 11 years old as the book kicks off, and living with her artistic mother, infant twin siblings, and grandparents in a beautiful English country home. The next four years of her life however, are mired by her mother's erratic behaviour that takes them to New York, a spiritual Ashram, and back to a darker London then either has experienced previously. Essentially the book follo...more
A really enjoyable book.
If you like the character of Jessa on Girls you could well imagine this as the story of her life up until the point she shows up in Brooklyn.
If you like the character of Jessa on Girls you could well imagine this as the story of her life up until the point she shows up in Brooklyn.
This started out as a somewhat charming story. I liked the main character, and her family was crazy, in a loveable way. I was halfway hoping that the story was close to the author’s own experiences growing up. Especially with having Roald Dahl for a grandfather. (I can totally see Kitty’s grandfather as Roald Dahl). But at the end of the story I was somewhat disappointed. The main characters all go down hill and you really question her mother’s sanity. It is actually quite disturbing at points....more
Playing With The Grown-Ups is, surprisingly, not quite chick lit. It certainly has all the warning signs: supermodel author, cutesy pink cover and, yes, gorgeous, fashionable characters.
Somehow, it manages to be slightly more than that. It's still not a meaty read, but at least some of its characters have more on their minds than finiding love and the right pair of heels.
We are first introduced to the protagonist, Kitty, as an adult: happily married, pregnant and living in New York. However, whe...more
Somehow, it manages to be slightly more than that. It's still not a meaty read, but at least some of its characters have more on their minds than finiding love and the right pair of heels.
We are first introduced to the protagonist, Kitty, as an adult: happily married, pregnant and living in New York. However, whe...more
I was attracted to this book by the title which I thought was great and I loved it when I started to read it. It's the story of Kitty and her life with her beautiful mother who was only eighteen when Kitty was born.
I found it easy to read but became more and more dissatisfied as the story continued. There's a preoccupation with the way the characters look (the more beautiful the better, as if that were the most significant part of anyone's life); the story line is uneven and appears to be a str...more
I found it easy to read but became more and more dissatisfied as the story continued. There's a preoccupation with the way the characters look (the more beautiful the better, as if that were the most significant part of anyone's life); the story line is uneven and appears to be a str...more
I felt compelled to finish this because I have a whole shelf of unread thrift store books making me feel guilty. I was bothered by the unfamiliar lifestyle of their family, it just didn't seem believable...or it is hard to imagine a single mother affording such a privileged and indulgent lifestyle (even if she sold paintings for awhile).
Too many characters, and locales-- and so little depth. Not to mention the downward spiral of the main character and her mother was just depressing. It's too ba...more
Too many characters, and locales-- and so little depth. Not to mention the downward spiral of the main character and her mother was just depressing. It's too ba...more
http://tinyurl.com/6c5tsg
I had no expectations for this book, even with the knowledge that her grandfather is the famous Roald. The description on LibraryThing gave an indication that it might be a chick-lit type book, and to some degree it is. In that female emotions, thoughts, processes are front and center.
I usually enjoy well-written chick-lit, and this is certainly beautifully written. But there is no progress in the novel. We watch Kitty grow up with her unhinged mother both in England and...more
I had no expectations for this book, even with the knowledge that her grandfather is the famous Roald. The description on LibraryThing gave an indication that it might be a chick-lit type book, and to some degree it is. In that female emotions, thoughts, processes are front and center.
I usually enjoy well-written chick-lit, and this is certainly beautifully written. But there is no progress in the novel. We watch Kitty grow up with her unhinged mother both in England and...more
This novel tells the life experiences of a young girl (Kitty) on the cusp of adulthood and her self-destructive "mummy" Marina. It is a beautifully written coming-of-age tale which develops quite a gritty sting in the latter half while describing Kitty's teen years. Throughout the story we read about Kitty’s idyllic life in country with her grandparents, mummy, aunts, siblings and nanny, her stay at boarding schools, the moving back and forth between England and the U.S., her friendships, drugs,...more
I read this book for two reasons:
1. Sophie Dahl is hot.
2. Sophie Dahl is the hot granddaughter of Roald Dahl.
Were it not for her hotness and literary lineage, I would not have read, much less even heard about, Playing with the Grown-ups, Sophie’s first novel.
But despite these irrelevant, verging on sexist, and recklessly inappropriate reasons for reading a book, I enjoyed Playing with the Grown-ups immensely.
Unlike Special Topics in Calamity Physics, whose author is also very hot, Playing with t...more
1. Sophie Dahl is hot.
2. Sophie Dahl is the hot granddaughter of Roald Dahl.
Were it not for her hotness and literary lineage, I would not have read, much less even heard about, Playing with the Grown-ups, Sophie’s first novel.
But despite these irrelevant, verging on sexist, and recklessly inappropriate reasons for reading a book, I enjoyed Playing with the Grown-ups immensely.
Unlike Special Topics in Calamity Physics, whose author is also very hot, Playing with t...more
Descriere oficială + adăugirile mele
Pentru Kitty, copilaria in casa bunicilor, printre flori de camp si rude iubitoare, este un paradis. Dar mamei ei, Marina, o fiinta nerabdatoare si mereu nelinistita cu ochii argintii si talent artistic deosebit, atmosfera casnica nu ii ofera distractia si agitatia pe care si-o doreste. La apogeul nelinistii ei, il intalneste pe Swami-Ji, un guru, care ii prevede un viitor la New York, astfel incat Marina isi ia familia si se muta, trimitand-o pe Kitty in e...more
Pentru Kitty, copilaria in casa bunicilor, printre flori de camp si rude iubitoare, este un paradis. Dar mamei ei, Marina, o fiinta nerabdatoare si mereu nelinistita cu ochii argintii si talent artistic deosebit, atmosfera casnica nu ii ofera distractia si agitatia pe care si-o doreste. La apogeul nelinistii ei, il intalneste pe Swami-Ji, un guru, care ii prevede un viitor la New York, astfel incat Marina isi ia familia si se muta, trimitand-o pe Kitty in e...more
For the first half of this book, I was reminded in ridiculous amounts of Tiger, Tiger by Galaxy Craze. Apparently this was published a full year before Tiger, Tiger however, so similarities are either coincidental, or at least not the fault of Dahl. At any rate, this is the better book.
Kitty is subject to the narcissistic and confused whims of her young and beautiful artist mother, who drags her to America so she can study in a cult-like setting with a swami. After this, Dahl moves the reader al...more
Kitty is subject to the narcissistic and confused whims of her young and beautiful artist mother, who drags her to America so she can study in a cult-like setting with a swami. After this, Dahl moves the reader al...more
Playing with the Grown-Ups is about Kitty and her mom, Marina. It’s about growing up and realising that glamorous mom hasn’t got it all.
The story begins with a pregnant Kitty who gets a phone call from her sister to come to England, something happened to their mother. Kitty hops on a plane and there it begins. We get to know Kitty and her family trough some kind of flashbacks.
Kitty and her mother lived with her grandparents, bestepapa and bestamama (so cute and fairytale like) but mom decides th...more
The story begins with a pregnant Kitty who gets a phone call from her sister to come to England, something happened to their mother. Kitty hops on a plane and there it begins. We get to know Kitty and her family trough some kind of flashbacks.
Kitty and her mother lived with her grandparents, bestepapa and bestamama (so cute and fairytale like) but mom decides th...more
I liked Sophie Dahl when she was a model (that opium ad! the way she almost looks like Debbie Harry sometimes!), and I like that she's Roald Dahl's granddaughter and that she inspired some of his characters as a child - so when I saw that she had written a novel, I was immediately interested. Her name must be a blessing as well as a curse for her, it probably attracts readers she normally wouldn't reach (like me - the cover of the Dutch translation was pretty unappealing) but it also creates hig...more
Dahl has a lyrical prose that flourishes enough to tap into the protagonist's emotions, but is measured enough that the writing detracts from a compelling and tight plot.
In this coming of age story, the protagonist walks us through her childhood from the safety of her successful adulthood, secure in a happy marriage and impending parenthood.
As a young girl, our protagonist describes her childhood country-side upbringing beautifully and establishes complicated relationships with her family member...more
In this coming of age story, the protagonist walks us through her childhood from the safety of her successful adulthood, secure in a happy marriage and impending parenthood.
As a young girl, our protagonist describes her childhood country-side upbringing beautifully and establishes complicated relationships with her family member...more
Aug 08, 2011
Toni
added it
I really enjoyed this story, the author has an imaginative writing style which at the same time mimics true life.. I found it so easy to empathise with the main character - the young child Kitty who adores her Mother but at the same time realises that the way her Mum 'is' is not really right. The story is often quite emotional with me as the reader wanting to 'step in' and just fix things. The novel is very funny in parts but also has a very serious undertone. All the characters are beautifully...more
She's a talented writer--clearly she got her grandfather Roald's writing genes--and there were some wonderful bits here, enough to have read the book at one gulp. But I found the story uneven--she'd go into beautiful detail and then abruptly transition her characters to another place. Perhaps that is meant to give the reader the same jolted feelings of the heroine, but it just seemed as if Dahl changed her mind about her story and characters as rapidly as her characters seemed to change their mi...more
A good but light read about a troubled mother-daughter relationship. A bizarre mixture of Roald Dahl meets Esther Freud. Roald Dahl not because of his fiction but more because of his background and all the famous family tales about him. So the family setting was very Dahl but with the hysterically exalted mother I remembered from Freud's Hideous Kinky.
In all it is an odd and funny read about a very young, beautiful mother who isn't cut out to raise her children properly. In the end things go ra...more
In all it is an odd and funny read about a very young, beautiful mother who isn't cut out to raise her children properly. In the end things go ra...more
As a young lover of Roald Dahl, I wanted to see what his granddaughter would bring to the literary table. I expected a light satire of wealthy life on the East Coast - however, this novel is much darker and visceral than I expected. Marina's self destructive and erratic behaviors are sad to see transferred to Kitty, who, as if adolescence isn't difficult enough, must cope with a manic and wholly unequipped mother who can't even take care of herself. It is heartbreaking and poignant and beautiful...more
Playing with the Grownups is a GenX coming-of-age story told from the point of view of Kitty, a child born to an unmarried high school student who had an affair with a married man. This story is as much the story of Kitty's coming-of-age as it is a story of the coming-of-age of her mother, Marina. The story is told as a series of flashbacks Kitty has while traveling back to England to visit her hospitalized mother. Even outside of the flashback convention, the flow of the story tends to get a bi...more
The story begins with the ever-dreaded phone call in the middle of the night, summoning Kitty to London because something's happened to her mother. Heavily pregnant herself, Kitty gets on the first flight, and, we think, starts the story from the beginning to demonstrate how she and her family got to the point where her mother lies in the hospital.
As a child, Kitty lived a somewhat idyllic life in the English countryside with her mother, brother, sister, aunts, grandparents, and nanny. Dahl vivi...more
As a child, Kitty lived a somewhat idyllic life in the English countryside with her mother, brother, sister, aunts, grandparents, and nanny. Dahl vivi...more
the reader needs a reassuring hug after finishing this story...a page-turner, this book had me staying up late (with my schedule that means a lot). Its very fast-paced, moving through events so quickly that it seems like a month or week has transpired between paragraphs. Somehow Kitty, the main character, got from 11 to 15 (and then 30(?) as the story is told as a flashback). While an engaging and well-written book, the memories of adolescence Kitty bravely leads us through are ultimately depres...more
Sophie's alterworld stories of growing up in the Dahl family, under the ruin and ravage of a free spirited, fickle, artsy hippie dippie model/painter mother, all her many lovers, and what it is to discover Dayglo mini skirts and boys in British school boy uniforms in the early 1990s. Coming of age femme fairy tale confectioned w/ shopping, snotty boarding schoool bitches, new age nightmares and a haven of heavenly grandparents & their cottage.
I enjoyed Dahl's straightforward and no fluff writing. She used brilliant short sentences that capture the essence of a very complex emotion. The story was quite ordinary though, it's about growing up with a fabulous, manic depressive, coke-snorting, guru-worshiping mother who falls in love with the wrong sort of men all the time. It's amazing that how it's the parents that you have to worry about these days. I was hooked on the story however, just as I was always hooked on glossy magazines and...more
I really liked the sentences, the language Dahl used. It was so British, wonderfully so. And the beginning was delightful. So specific and engaging. Then as the main character grows up, I felt that the writing got as jumbled as her life. It was an escape book from the daunting experience of reading Ghosh's The Glass Palace. But at a certain point I just started skimming, on the prowl for good passages, but no longer caring too much about the characters.
I really liked this book. I think the cover looks like a sexeducation book or something like that. But the story is nice. There's a lot going on and the story wasn't very coherent. I really liked Marina and the way she was a bit of a stereotype. I don't know wh eterit was the authors intention to make kitte a little bit annoying but in some way this really worked. I mean all girls of her age are a little bit annoying.
I really enjoyed this book! I think it was because it was a different style to what I'm used to reading and the story was so relatable that made me enjoy it even more. I believe it was truly made to be realistic, but also have that kind of "fairy-tale"/ dreamy feel to it. I think the cover also really suited the book. I wouldn't have had it any other way! it was a really good book that I would recommend reading!
I enjoyed the first half of this book, but then it went downhill for me. I wasn't expecting it to be so bleak or gritty or depressing and that wasn't what I wanted to read. :( The reviews on the back cover describe this book as sweet, sparkling, beautiful, lyrical, etc -- that sounds like the Sophie Dahl I know from The Man With The Dancing Eyes. Where did she go?
I would have given this book more stars if...it had actually gone somewhere. It started and then seemed to abruptly finish. I think there were beautiful passages in this book, but I kept waiting for the characters to develop. Maybe I am too used to mysteries and therefore this book was a little too steady and uneventful. I really wished for a happy ending for Kitty and her mother, and just felt sad at the end.
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Sophie Dahl (born Sophie Holloway) is an English author, cookbook writer and former model. She was born in London, the daughter of actor Julian Holloway and writer Tessa Dahl. Her maternal grandparents were author Roald Dahl and actress Patricia Neal. Her paternal grandfather was actor Stanley Holloway. She was the inspiration for Sophie, the main character in her maternal grandfather's book The B...more
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“The problem with life is, we often do things that will ultimately be self-destructive and make us unhappy, yet in that moment it seems like the best idea in the world. You have to be careful of moments - they're tricksy things.”
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36 people liked it
“I think it doesn't really make a difference where she is, because she always takes herself with her.”
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8 people liked it
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