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Summary: I fell in love
Review: Yes, I admit it, I'm man in his 30s, and I fell in love with Cassandra Mortmain while reading this book. What a charming and witty character! "I Capture The Castle" is not remotely the sort of book I normally read, but I couldn't ignore all the glowing reviews I'd come across. What an incredible book ... I feel that I know those characters and places so intimately that I can't convince myself they're all fictional. I read the last few pages at a snail's pace, because I really didn't want it to end. There have been only a handful of books that have ever so thoroughly entranced me.I can't wait until my daughter is old enough to read this book. But it isn't just a book for girls. Anyone who loves great writing, or aspires to be a writer, will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Lost in this book!
Review: I dare you to pick this book up and then try to put it down. Cassandra, the 17-year old narrarator, will keep your attention despite your worldly distractions. Allow yourself to get wrapped up in the English countryside - a crumbling old castle, a bizarre family ... and coming of age for the 17 year old narrarator and her distracted 21 year old sister. An excellent read... you will love it!
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Summary: Delightful!
Review: A short while I discovered this enjoyable book, now back in print. I sat down and devoured it in a day or two. Cassandra is a teenage girl growing up in England in the 1930's. Her family has moved to a ramshackle castle, where they live in poverty, or near to it. The story is her enchanting diary, in which she records her thoughts, hopes, and wishes candidly and clearly. Cassandra is a very likeable character, as she is by no means perfect, and is honest about her imperfections; at the same time, she keeps trying to be the type of person that will make her family proud. Well worth the read, for people of all ages!
Rating:
Summary: I Capture the Castle
Review: This book was extremely inciteful and readable and contained fabulous characterization. I was enthralled from the first sentence to the last by Cassandra's adventures and misadventures. I would recommend it to anyone. In someways comic, and in some tragic, it is always lyrical and beautiful.
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Summary: One of my favorites
Review: I found out about this book from a small catalog and bought it with my fingers crossed. And I was very impressed! Smith's character Cassandra captures the castle and the people living in it with cleverness and thoughtfulness that I could only hope to possess. She is a wonderful heroine - maybe not beautiful like her sister Rose, but she knows what she wants (at least in the end) and has a way of talking right to the reader so you can identify with her. Simon and Neil Cotton characters bring more humor to the book and bring out the Mortmain family, as seen from outsiders. Another strong point besides the characters was the foreshadowing that keeps one wanting to read on and on without stopping. Some parts, especially the "life lesson" at the end, were a little predictable, but that doesn't take very much away from this excellent story. I recommend I Capture the Castle to young adults and older adults who enjoy romance and fantasy.
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Summary: This is a great book
Review: When I started reading this book, I thought that it would be another castle novels, which i HATE. But as soon as I turned page 19 I was hooked, and this book really caught my attention. Cassandra and her sister are two very interesting girls, and the two guys they meet are really cool. I did a book report on it and, I have to say, I finished the book more than a month before it was due! THis is a must read for someone that loves a cute love story!!!
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Summary: Ah To Be In England In The Spring...
Review: This charming, old-fashioned novel is by the author of "101 Dalmations." I enjoyed it greatly and feel that it would be most appreciated by romantic teenage girls and ladies who remember it from their childhood. It is a sweet tale of a family very similar in nature to the family in George S. Kaufmann's "You Can't Take It With You." However, I did find the plotline regarding the lovelives of the sisters to be trite and taken directly from the melodramas of the 1930's and 40's. It is a sweet book, but there isn't anything new or unexpected in the story.
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Summary: Beautiful!
Review: I think I can safely say that this is my favorite book. It is the kind of book in which halfway through it you become terribly sad because you don't want it to end. I Capture the Castle is written with such beauty, originality, and humor, and is so easy to relate to, even if one has never lived next to a crumbling old castle in the English countryside. If you want to read a book that will make you feel wonderful inside, this is the one.
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Summary: "I Capture the Castle" is a charming and whimsical novel.
Review: Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle" is the story of the Mortmain family, as told through the diary entries of seventeen-year old Cassandra Mortmain. The Mortmains live in England in a drafty old castle, without any source of regular income. In her witty and wonderfully colorful diary entries, Cassandra bemoans the horrible meals, the awful clothes and the bitter cold that they all must endure. She writes with bravado and style, and she is a most endearing heroine. Her family is not ordinary. James Mortmain, her father, is a formerly successful author who wrote one book and then abruptly stopped writing. In spite of his family's extreme poverty, he refuses to put pen to paper. Cassandra's stepmother, Topaz, is a former artist's model who is still gorgeous and occasionally outrageous. Cassandra and Rose decide that Rose, the older sister, must marry someone wealthy in order to escape their wretched impoverished state. Fortunately, two brothers, Simon and Neil Cotton, come into their lives and the inevitable romantic entanglements ensue. Most of the book is engrossing and funny. However, the book is a little too long. The last fifty to seventy-five pages drag a bit. All in all, Smith has created a delightful heroine, whose fresh and irreverent voice is a breath of fresh air. I recommend this book as a light and entertaining diversion.
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Summary: This time all the exaggerations are true: Wonderful book!
Review: What a delight of a book. Written in the form of a seventeen year old girl's journal, over the period of six months during which her life and that of her (rather unusual) family change dramatically, this novel introduces us to one of the most likeable voices in fiction. Cassandra Mortmain, an aspiring writer, keeps the journal to hone her skills; she ends up, rather, getting to know herself and her surroundings better. Smith manages to keep her reader's interest effortlessly (or so it seems, though the hints given by Mr. Mortmain's struggles may indicate otherwise), through a carefully rationed supply of surprises, small suspenses, and the sheer curiosity she has created about the future of the Mortmain family. The most frustrating (though perhaps most amusing for Smith) part of the thing is that Mr. Mortmain is an author himself, the highly regarded author of a book of fiction, poetry, experiments, called "Jacob's Wrestling" that figures in "Capture," but we are given tantalisingly little information about it. I expect Smith enjoyed doing that to us; i know i would. Though it has the feel of a juvenile book (the narrator is seventeen, it's about [among other things] first loves), this is an adult book; though teenagers can read and enjoy it, more will be discovered by the active adult reader.
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