PLAYING WITH THE GROWN-UPS

A slightly autobiographical first novel from Dahl, granddaughter of Roald, and a one-time fashion model and current contributing editor at Men’s Vogue.

Childhood has been both unconventional and idyllic for Kitty. She lives at bucolic Hay House with doting grandparents, two vivacious young aunts, a brother, a sister and their beloved nanny. And then there’s Marina, her mother and the center of her universe. Marina is a painter and a bon vivant, as mercurial as she is beautiful. When Marina falls under the spell of a guru, she sends Kitty away to boarding school. Later, Marina will uproot Kitty yet again, taking her away from England to America, and, later still, to the swami’s ashram. As she struggles to forge an identity for herself, Kitty must contend not only with the inevitable upheavals of adolescence, but also with her mother’s increasing instability. Dahl tells Kitty’s story in a voice that is both unremittingly cheerful and oddly distant, and her abundant and occasionally well-crafted similes don’t quite add up to real literary substance. Every incident here is obscured by the pixie dust of adorable metaphors, and Dahl cannot seem to resist the urge to make everyone too preciously quirky to be true. The eccentric coming-of-age story is hardly a new one, and this particular entry lacks the depth and texture that might have made it compelling.

Cloying and weightless.