I Capture the Castle

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Summary: My favorite book. I've read it more than any other.
Review: Every Midsummer's Eve I think about Cassandra's celebratory pagan rituals and of how much I adore Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. Tonight being that date I told a friend about this treasure, and am amazed to find it actually in print and available. I have read of Cassandra's adventures since I was her age through my own now (31). Each time I read I am struck by the forcefulness and poignancy of the writing, at how we as readers watch Cassandra grow into her strength as a writer and into her pain as a young woman. The scene in which Cassandra sits in the church during a storm ("I am a chaos inside a stillness inside a chaos") and ponders the relation of spirituality and human-kindness I review my own sense of spirit and self. Details, such as the color of the liquers, the shadows of the castle, the green die in the tub, the packed lunches for Mortmain in the castle, illustrate the power of Smith as a writer of tremendous force-- most powerful in her ability to have these details grow from Cassandra's pen (or pencil stub). I gave my first copy away to a good friend for her graduation, then received another used copy from a good friend on my first birthday away from home. I have never known a world which I wish to share more than that of the castle, England in the 30s, the world of I Capture the Castle.

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Summary: Every young woman with romance in her heart should read this
Review: This is a book you will read many times through your life. There is joy, sorrow. and humor. You will always be happy to have read this book. Try to find the author's other books- 'It Ends With Revalations', 'A Tale of Two Families','The New Moon With The Old', 'The Town In Bloom', and, of course, 'The One Hundred and One Dalmatians'.

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Summary: Have searched for a given away at least a dozen copies .
Review: Most of these reviews sounds as if they're written by teenagers -- let me sign in -- I'm 72, first met the book when I was 25, totally enchanted. Like many others, have searched for the old book-club copies at used book sales so I could share this delightful book with everyone I know. I envy anyone who hasn't read it yet-- they have some pleasant hours ahead. (The woman who first recommended it to me said she'd got the title -- in 1950 -- from The Brooklyn Library's Cheerful Book List.

(Try compiling your own Depressing Book List.)

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Summary: I can finally stop lending my (very tattered) copy!
Review: My mother nearly shrieked in the middle of the library book sale as she ran over to me, thrusting into my adolescent hands a grey, clothbound book.

"This is the BEST book!" she said. "I have been looking for this book for you for years!"

Naturally, being a teenager, I did not want to like whatever my mother liked, and it took me a long time to open the cover of _I Capture the Castle_. Once I did, once I read that fantastic first sentence, I was hooked. Since then, I have read it at least once every year, and my mother and her friend Polly and I have amused ourselves for many hours casting the movie we'd like to make of it (Gabriel Byrne for Mortmain, Sean Bean for The Swain . . . ?).

It is a charming, clever, intelligent book, with a heroine who is three-dimensional and extremely sympathetic. Its cast of characters are the family and friends you always wished you had, its love story satisfying in its open-endedness.

If you know a smart, literary teenaged girl (or if you are or were one), buy the book. I swear you won't regret it.

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Summary: I love this book!
Review: I CAPTURE THE CASTLE is truly one of the best books I've ever read. Cassandra, the main character, becomes like a dear friend as you read the three journals through which we see her life. She could very easily be you or I, and even goes through the heart-tugging situations the way a real person would. Her charm and her romantic view of the happenings surrounding her and her family draw one into this beautifully written book. When you're through, you'll want to have a Midsummer's festival, just like Cassandra.

I try to read this book at least once a year- it is one that you will never tire of, and one which you wish would continue long after it is over! Buy this book- have some cocoa- then escape into Cassandra's world of English castles and newfound love.

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Summary: Two sisters, two brothers in a falling-to-pieces castle.
Review: My mother had an original bookclub edition of this and I have it, earnestly annotated in my adolescent hand. My sisters now have copies collected at book sales over the past 30 years. My daughter loves it now. Seventeen year old Cassandra Mortmain wants to be a writer and fills three journals with the tale of a year in '30's England...her writer-father in the middle of an unexplicable dry period, her step-mother Topaz who "communes with nature" in the nude, her beautiful but discontented sister Rose, Stephen the young hired-man and the exciting American brothers who inherit the great house in the neighborhood. "Which do you like better, Jane Austen with a touch of Charlotte Bronte, or Charlotte Bronte with a touch of Jane Austen?" is the kind of question the sisters ponder until real life becomes much more interesting. A lovely book that hasn't aged a bit.

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Summary: The best kind of romance there is.
Review: Not just romance in terms of love (although there's plenty of that too - sweet, innocent, wonderful and heartbreaking) but the romance of the time and the setting and the characters are what's so great about this book. Swimming in a castle moat by moonlight; bathing in front of the fire; hot tea on a cold, dark, English night; a beautiful stepmother named Topaz. If that sounds good to you, you'll love I CAPTURE THE CASTLE!

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Summary: Hurrah for re-publication!
Review: An old family friend gave me a copy of this when I was a teenager and I must have read it ten times before loaning it to some wretch who didn't give it back! I just re-read my brand new copy and loved it just as much. Dodie Smith was not only a great storyteller and a wonderful writer -- she also had a fabulous sense of humor. This book literally makes me laugh out loud every time I read it -- and in spite of its age, it isn't dated at all. Great characterizations, tons of atmosphere, and wit by the gallon -- not to mention a story that will keep you up much too late for your own good!

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Summary: Capture this book!
Review: I came across this book accidentally. My co-worker had it on the library reference desk. She said it was the next book in her book discussion group. After she told me a little about it I decided to read it. Then, I had second thoughts. So, I read reviews of it on Amazon. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to read it when I read that people said it was like Jane Austen would write if she was around today. Even though I'm a former English major and a librarian, I will commit the great heresy and admit I don't like Jane Austen. She's too hoity-toity for me. But, then, in a review I read the opening couple of sentences: "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." This is such a great and intriguing opening that I had to know what was going on. I'm glad I decided to read it. It is a delightful novel, especially describing the poverty the Mortmains experience living in the castle. (You don't associate living in a castle with poverty! That, right there, makes the book different.) I have to admit, it does rather read like a modern Jane Austen and yet I didn't mind all the talk about who loved whom and who was going to marry whom. I also enjoyed sharing the challenge of getting James Mortmain to go back to his writing. It's a very good read with interesting characters, including the castle itself. And, if you like romances, you will really like this book.

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Summary: I wanted to be Cassandra Mortmain when I was younger
Review: The plot of "I Capture the Castle" sounds, on its surface, a little Cinderella-y: two genteely impoverished sisters of between-the-wars Britain live in a ruined castle with their eccentric novelist father and his bohemian wife Topaz. (If you want a taste of author Dodie Smith's ability to write funny characters, bear in mind she is also the author of "101 Dalmations").

Two wealthy American brothers move in next door; although they are initially blinded by sister Rose's classic beauty, eventually one of them (I won't say which) sees the depth of character behind the narrator, the more sincere and thoughtful Cassandra.

Cassandra is an enchanting narrator (the book is a series of first-person entries into her journal) - she is witty, self-effacing, and completely authentic. The reader will absolutely believe she is a real, irreplacable person.

I was so enamored of Cassandra that at first I worried for her when she fell in love - I was worried about a too-convenient fairy-tale ending. But happily the "happily ever after" is replaced by a more intriguing end; Cassandra's final decision is perfectly consistent with her chracter.

I only wish I had read this when I was, like her, a teenager - it would have meant a lot to me to meet a character so ambitious, energetic, lively, funny, who still clearly has romance in her future.