Paperbacks: Playing With the Grown-Ups, by Sophie Dahl

Friday 16 May 2008 00:00 BST

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Though it drags slightly under the influence of Mitford, Waugh and the too, too divine eccentricities of a best-forgotten time, this vivacious novel about a charmingly dysfunctional family has plenty to recommend it.

The voice of adolescent Kitty is a perfect mix of arrogance and angst as she teeters on perfect legs through her rack-ety teens. Her mother Marina, a "spectacular beauty", is a comic but complex figure – a Bolter for our times.

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Paperbacks: Playing With the Grown-Ups, by Sophie Dahl

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