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... Read Full Review

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... Read Full Review

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... Read Full Review

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... Read Full Review