NEW YORK (AP) – It seems somehow appropriate that a mischievous dog helped stop Roald Dahl's granddaughter from making a big writing mistake.

It happened when model-turned-author Sophie Dahl was composing her first full-length novel in longhand, on a legal pad. She thought it was more romantic that way – and the tone matched.

"It was so childish but I found I was writing as I imagined a book should sound. I had this sort of rather grand voice. It wasn't true," she says. "It was bloody awful."

Thankfully, that's when a puppy – can't you just imagine it leaping from the pages of one of her grandfather's quirky, magical novels? – destroyed the fledgling novel. "In the morning, I came down and there was just confetti. The puppy had just ripped everything to shreds," says Dahl, 30. "Actually, I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever, ever seen. "I thought, 'OK. Fine. Start again'.'

What emerged is the semi-autobiographical "Playing With the Grown-ups'', which has earned some polite reviews for a young writer hoping to keep a third generation of Dahls in print.

The book captures the adolescence of a girl named Kitty, the precocious daughter of a stunning young artist – the kind of mother who shows up at a school play and leaves behind a "snaky trail of Mitsouko and some wobbly looking fathers''.

Kitty's single mother is also a bit tragic. She's a hopeless romantic who puts on extravagant parties, cries at doves cooing on her windowsill – even when they're just city pigeons – and suffers from debilitating bouts of depression. Kitty grows up constantly on the move, from London to New York to a guru's ashram and back again, learning about boys and life. She matures into a head-turner and a bit of a hellcat.

The story line has piqued the interest of the British, who see parallels with the author's life. A beautiful mother who suffers from depression? Check: Dahl's mother is Tessa Dahl, a former actress-turned writer who had Sophie when she was 19 and has chronicled her own personal struggles. What about the precocious daughter? Check: Sophie had a nomadic childhood that included 10 schools and 17 homes in New York, London and even an ashram. She also matured into a head-turner and a bit of a hellcat, one who reportedly dated Mick Jagger.

"It's a first novel. Find me a first novel that doesn't have parallels with the author's life. The quirky thing about mine is that some of my life is on the record," Dahl says.

Reviewers have been generally encouraging, with The Independent saying Kitty's teenage voice is "spot on" and The Sydney Morning Herald proclaiming, "Dahl has genuine talent as a writer''.

"There were some good reviews, then some middling reviews and then some utterly ferocious, hideous reviews," she says, sipping tea in a sleek boutique Manhattan hotel.

"I think pretty fair on the whole. Had it been eight, 10 years ago, I think I would have been a lot more sensitive to it, but actually I could afford to be slightly more adult. For a first book, this is really OK."

What about her parents? How did they react? "They were both very sweet," she says. Her father, actor Julian Holloway, offered a classic line: "Glad you got that out of the way. Next we can move on to some really different fiction."

Nan A. Talese, who released the book on her own Doubleday imprint, says Dahl's beauty can sometimes overshadow her skill with words, which is what has centred her during a chaotic life.

"I'm just so keen for her to keep on writing because she has a remarkable insight into human nature, she has a great sense of humor and in this book she's certainly enormously forgiving," Talese says.

For her part, Dahl says she's just glad she got her first novel out of the way. "It's been a huge learning curve and actually what I want to do now is write things just so unrelated to me – unrecognisable in any way, be it fantasy or historical murder fiction," she says, then adds with a laugh: "It's going to be about crime from now on."

Dahl became a model when she was 18, a six-foot, wide-eyed stunner whose non-heroin chic curves became a tabloid staple. She hit star status after posing naked in an ad for Opium perfume, a campaign so racy it provoked protests in Britain and France. She hopes Americans will enjoy her own debut without knowing all her back story. "Here, they're more interested in my genes than the size of my jeans," she says. Those genes, of course, include her late grandfather's, who wrote such classics as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "James and the Giant Peach''.