{"id":429,"date":"2008-04-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T00:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=429"},"modified":"2024-12-31T13:16:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T00:16:45","slug":"playing-with-grown-ups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/04\/19\/playing-with-grown-ups\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing with Grown-ups"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Sophie Dahl<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Allen &amp; Unwin<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, April 19th 2008<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The title of Sophie Dahl\u2019s new novel, <em>Playing with the Grow-ups<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Heavily pregnant with her first child and full of misgivings about her own ability as a parent, Kitty\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Kitty\u2019s world is constantly changing at her mother\u2019s whim, from the safety of her grandparents\u2019 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\u2019s excesses until events force her to choose between her mother\u2019s needs and her own. The end of this last journey will mark her final coming-of-age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sophie Dahl<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Otago Daily Times review April 19th 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[75,370,18,77],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-75","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-sophie-dahl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1392,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/1392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}