Playing with the Grown-ups

by SophieDahl (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.29

  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.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $4.25

  To Kitty, growing up at Hay House, surrounded by bluebell woods and doting relations, is heaven. But for her mother, the restless Marina, a silver-eyed beauty who paints and weeps with alacrity, Hay cannot provide the novelty or excitement she so craves. Swami-ji, Marina's guru, sees her future in New York, and so the family is scooped up and relocated, leaving Kitty exiled in a colourless boarding school. Reprieve comes in the form of the guru's summons to the ashram, but then, just as Kitty is approaching enlightenment, they are off again, leaving everything behind to come back to an England that is 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 fourteen, must choose: whether to play dangerous games with the grown-ups or to finally put herself first. Witty, lyrical and heartbreaking, Playing with the Grown-ups is a modern coming-of-age story that heralds the arrival of a unique new talent.