I Capture the Castle

Dodie Smith may be best-known as the author of The One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but she was the author of many hit West End plays and several best-selling books. If you enjoy mid-20th-century British fiction, may I recommend a perfect gem of a novel, back in print after many years a-languishing: I Capture the Castle, told in first-person narration by Cassandra Mortmain, the younger daughter of a family of impoverished eccentrics living in a small run-down castle in the British countryside, as she tries to "capture" her life in her private journal. Her father is a once-famous writer with a seemingly-insurmountable case of writer's block; her stepmother Topaz is an unusually-gorgeous former model with pretentions of artistry and a loving heart; her beloved sister Rose is hungry for some sort--any sort!--of change. Into this almost Austen-like situation comes Simon, the new landlord, an upper-class American from New England, along with his informal younger brother, raised in California, and their "club woman" mother, and suddenly the potentials and possibilities and coincidences become endlessly interesting...Will Simon propose to Rose? Will Mortmain ever write again? Will Cassandra's swain kiss her in the bluebell wood? Perhaps it doesn't sound like much, but it's engaging and endearing, a period-piece with "good bones" and long-lasting, pleasurable resonance, still holding up well after half a century on the shelves.On my top-40 list, certainly, if not my top-10. I can't recommend this one highly enough.

After I read a very short synopsis of this book, I knew it was a MUST HAVE. The only dissapointment was that it was not long enough. Cassandra Mortmain makes you want to be seventeen again. She narrates to you the very width and depth of her life during probably the most important summer of her life -- the summer she falls in love. It is a story about growing up, getting on, and making do. The fact that it is set in a ruined castle on the English countryside just drags the reader in deeper and deeper into Cassandra's realm. I read the book in two sittings, then I passed it on to my best friend. She too fell madly in love with Cassandra Mortmain, her beautiful sister Rose, and all the delightful characters that come to life for the reader throughout this book.I CAPTURE THE CASTLE is a book for all ages. I kept asking myself, "Why couldn't I have had this book when I was seventeen?"Read it. You are guaranteed to enjoy it. You will laugh, cry, daydream, and want to have a Ms. Blossom all of your own. You will long for more

I hate when books are hyped out of proportion but, in this case, believe the hype. I rarely react to a book so strongly that it leaves me with a pleasant glow days after I have read it. Magically, this book manages to be the warmest, most positive, least cloying story I have ever read (even the end is satisfying without being a cop-out). It is beautifully written with an amazing sense of place, atmosphere and character. Who couldn't fall in love with Cassandra with her quick wit, intelligence and unconventional outlook? I have rarely read such an unpatronising, accurate and positive account of a girl on the brink of adulthood. Read ICTC for the cleverly constructed plot. Read it for the descriptive passages and the evocation of time and place. Read it for the distinctive and endearingly eccentric characters, especially the narrator, Cassandra. Just read it. And don't think you have to be a woman to love this book. I am a guy in his late twenties who intends to pass on my copy of the book to most of my friends - male and female - under the strict condition that it is returned in mint condition!

I have long adored this book! I am so pleased to see so many discovering and rediscovering it. I would like to share a letter I received from Dodie Smith in 1985, when she so kindly responded to a letter I wrote to her. She replied:Dear Lynn Hudson, Very many thanks for a particularily kind letter. "I Capture the Castle" was first published in 1948, 37 years ago and yet I still get letters about it, from old friends like you and also, occasionaly, from new friends. I'm astonished and proud that it has lasted so long. I've written other novels and two of my childrens' books continue to be succesful, (paticularily The Hundred and one Dalmatians), but nothing (for me anyway) means as much as ICTC> Where did those characters come from? They are not drawn from life. The Castle partly is but I changed it a great deal and I much prefer my own castle! I've been asked again and again to write a sequel to ICTC but I'm sure I never could. I don't even like to think of the future of the characters because I don't want them to grow older. I've been asked again and again to say whom Cassandra marries but I've no idea. I like to think of her just hopeful for the future and I shall let myself think you and I share this idea. I am now 89 and sometimes (but only sometimes) almost feel it, but not when I think about Cassandra. Thank You again for your letter which has given me great pleasure. And I like to think that in some mysterious realm of the imagination, the characters in my book are pleased to and send you their love-with mine. Dodie Smith Dodie Smith and I wrote back and forth a few more times, until she was unable to write again. She died in 1990. Thank-You, Dodie, for the wonderful gift of "I Capture the Castle"!