I Capture The Castle

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This book was such a wonderful, enchanting and unpredictable read that by the end of it I felt like I almost was Cassandra, since her confessions, recordings and thoughts in her journals gave me a thorough insight into her. I also loved how the sections of the book were arranged in differently priced notebooks, which really demonstrated the progression of the story! Overall, I would recommend this book as a must-read for any preteen/teenage girl. They have strong opinions about whether Cassandra and Simon Cotton ought to be together (they should not, Simon does not deserve Cassandra) and whether the 2003 movie adaptation was any good (it was not, young Henry Cavill was inspired casting for Stephen but everything else was nonsense). They have read I Capture the Castle and fallen under its immensely charming and slightly melancholy spell, and they know that everyone else who loves that book must be a kindred spirit.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy. I can’t say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring—I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn’t a very good poem. I have decided my poetry is so bad that I mustn’t write any more of it. On Religion: "I think it is an art, the greatest one; and extension of the communion all the other arts attempt."Every time I meet someone who also loves I Capture the Castle, I know we must be kindred spirits' - Jenny Han, bestselling author of To All the Boys I've Loved Before A delicious, compulsively readable novel about young love and its vicissitudes. What fun!” —Erica Jong The second half of this is like Jane Austen removed the mask and revealed she was just Some Romance Writer - not to be confused with a good romance writer, of which there are many - and then she also punched me in the stomach.

It is difficult for me to say why I found I Capture the Castle so personally meaningful, which may mean that I will be falling all over myself in this review. When I first started reading I was bored and feared that the poverty of the characters would become dirty and depressing for its own sake, as in Angela's Ashes. Instead, it's more like a lovely BBC movie where people are always chewing with their mouth open, but somehow it is only charming. At first I resisted liking anything about it, including Cassandra's repeated use of the word "capture", but now I find myself thinking about how to describe this or that and involuntarily using the word "capture" in my thoughts. The story is at times screwball and at times elegant but always delightful and completely won me over. Mother died eight years ago, from perfectly natural causes. I think she must have been a shadowy person, because I have only the vaguest memory of her and I have an excellent memory for most things. (I can remember the cake-knife incident perfectly—I hit the fallen neighbour with my little wooden spade. Father always said this got him an extra month.) Rebel Voices: Disruptive Stories from Trailblazing Women - a new Puffin Classics collection, celebrating International Women's Day 2023 Cassandra's Father is the most pig-ignorant and frustrating character that I've come across in literature in a while. He's arrogant, rather abusive, sexist to the very core, he ignores his wife and children (yet they still dote on him) demands meals when he wants them from the women even though there is no money coming in because all he does all day is hide upstairs twiddling his thumbs and doing the odd crossword. He is a character that added nothing to the plot, except annoyance and irritation for me.The rain is driving hard against the window now. My candle makes it seem quite dark outside. And the far side of the kitchen is dimmer now that the kettle is on the round hole in the top of the range. The girls are sitting on the floor making toast through the bars. There is a bright edge to each head, where the firelight shines through their hair. A beautiful, deluxe edition of Dodie Smith’s beloved novel, I Capture the Castle, featuring a new foreword by New York Times bestselling author Jenny Han, a stunning new cover, and designed endpapers that is perfect for devoted readers and those discovering this timeless story for the first time.

I noted in a recent book that I recently read, “Guard Your Daughters” by Diana Tutton, that some reviewers likened it to this book. That is what got me searching for this book and reading it.Rose, his elder daughter, is lovely and self-centred, and is willing to sell herself to get out of her poverty; the younger daughter Cassandra is pretty, witty and intelligent and aspires to be a novelist. Their youngest sibling Thomas is fifteen and precocious like Cassandra. Their stepmother (the girls’ mother had died eight years before the story opens), who is only twety-nine and goes by the unusual name Topaz is a former artists’ model who worships the ground James treads on and sometimes communes with nature by dancing on the moors stark naked. Stephen Colly, the Mortmains’ maid’s son who has continued to stay with them even after her mother’s passing, makes himself useful about the house and is hopelessly in love with Cassandra. I mean, it’s all very upper class white people problems. Oh no, we can’t afford our castle. Oh no, Rose is behaving in a socially awkward manner to an American. Oh no, we’re all in love with the wrong person.