Sophie Dahl
Allen & Unwin
Otago Daily Times, April 19th 2008
The title of Sophie Dahl’s new novel, Playing with the Grow-ups, captures the essence of adolescence; the deliberate rejection of childhood and the first appropriation of the adult concerns and behaviours that will ultimately move from act to actuality.
Heavily pregnant with her first child and full of misgivings about her own ability as a parent, Kitty’s journey to visit her ailing mother, Marina, is spent reliving the memories of growing up with this child- woman. An artist and socialite as temperamental and restless as a butterfly, Marina constantly moves from one obsession to the next in search of novelty and love, dragging her children with her.
Kitty’s world is constantly changing at her mother’s whim, from the safety of her grandparents’ farm to the isolation of an English boarding school, from a surreal New York ashram to gritty London suburbia. Both rebel and worshipper, Kitty begins to imitate Marina’s excesses until events force her to choose between her mother’s needs and her own. The end of this last journey will mark her final coming-of-age.
Like her grandfather Roald, Dahl clearly understands the world of the young, but is much fonder of its inhabitants. Despite the potential darkness of the subject matter, her creation remains oddly whimsical, lightweight and sweet.
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