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Summary: Let Yourself Be Captured
Review: 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.
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Summary: A magical read!!
Review: This book will captivate you, hold your attention for the duration. A must-read from off the beaten path.
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Summary: An Anglophile's dream
Review: This is a perfect book. I thought I'd read all of the cozy, well-written, pastoral English novels that exist ... and then I found this novel. I read it in three days flat and mourned that it didn't last longer. The characters are vivid and real and the dialogue sparkles ... it's like a modern Jane Austen but with a touch more action and with beautiful visual descriptions of the English countryside. If you love Anne of Green Gables or Elizabeth Bennett or Jane Eyre or Betsy Ray, you'll adore Cassandra: she has the perfect blend of spunk, ingenuity, and pensiveness. I adored this book. I'll never get tired of it.
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Summary: One of the best book gifts I've received
Review: A friend of mine gave me this book for my 42nd b'day, saying I'd love it. The J.K. Rowling blurb on the cover gave me pause (was it a children's book? ) as did the old-fashioned cover and unknown author name (to me). Well, I absolutely adored this book and its characters--laughing out loud at the bear coat scene and crying inconsolably at the last words the narrator writes. Others here have said more about the plot, but all I can say if you love Pride and Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women or any books that feature strong-willed, quirky girl-women, you will adore this book. Give it to your friends, too. And I hope it's true that they are making a film of this, since it should revive interest in the book. (Although after what Hollywood did to Land Girls and Cold Comfort Farm, I'm afraid for this little gem.) Cassandra's journal entries capture the castle perfectly as well as the heart of her readers. Enjoy!
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Summary: A young girl coming of age
Review: I bought this book while on vacation and was looking for something to read. I admit that it was the simplicity of the cover that caught my attention. The writing style was wonderful and I always enjoy a book written in the first person narrative. The main character, Cassandra, was easy to listen to. A girl on the verge of womanhood, she showed wisdom, insight and sensitivity beyond her years. Considering that she lived in such a dysfunctional family, it was miraculous that she turned out to be so well-adjusted.
The writing style was beautiful-not too wordy, but allowing for crystal-clear descriptions of the family and their surroundings. I did find that the plot was alittle predictable and events that should have taken time to evolve, happened at a whirlwind pace. At times I thought that months or years had passed, until the narrator indicated that it was actually the next day ( I just don't think that the kind of events described happen that fast in real-life).
In general, I found this to be an enjoyable and pleasant book. No sex, no drugs, no violence - just the likable story of a girl coming of age.
P.S. Men might not find this story as compelling as a woman might-it's definitely a "girl" book.
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Summary: Going on my list of all-time favorites
Review: This book has everything a good book should have: memorable characters (Cassandra is one of the most lovable narrators I've ever stumbled upon, and I wanted to meet in person everyone in the story!), substance, romance, humor, and the ability to keep the reader thoroughly happy! I did not want this book to end. I felt I was part of their 1930 English countryside world and didn't want to come back to 2002 (there's just no "class" in the world anymore!) This book gave me the same warm glowing feeling as Pride and Prejudice. There is the film that is coming out soon. I look forward to it, but how could it ever do this beautiful work justice?
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Summary: The way things use to be
Review: This book rang many similarities with Pride and Prejudice. Both books were set in England with themes encapsulating the coming of age of women and their expected roles. In I Capture the Castle, Rose read about men in books and the only modern woman she and Cassandra (her sister) knew was Topaz (their stepmother). Cassandra tells Rose, "We know two men and they like us." Then proceeded to describe them as having "nice teeth, queer looking dark beard, nice hair, both tall, one broader then the other." Rose says, "I was charming. Isn't that what men like?" Just as in Pride and Prejudice, men and how to relate to them was a mystery to these women as they often joked about it. They married for income and because liked the 'look' of them. I Capture the Castle takes this one step further by discovering the path to love. Self-worth of women was attached to being attached. Topaz admits "I've got to be needed Cassandra. I always have been. Men have either painted me or been in love with me or ill treated me, but one way or another I've always been needed." When Rose creates green dye and begins to dye virtually everything, Cassandra gives it a try. She discovers "It really makes one feel rather God-like to turn things a different color." I found it quite amazing how a simple thing like this could make them feel powerful compared to the wants and needs of today's society. Although marriage is used to attain wealth and stability, Cassandra reflects, "Luxury. It is more then just having things. It makes the very air feel different. I feel different. Relaxed. Lazy." Pride and Prejudice was filled with old world traditions, while I Capture the Castle reflected the changing times. The women of today have the choice to be self-sufficient, gain wealth independently and marry or not to marry. We have come a long way.
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Summary: Short Review for I Capture the Castle
Review: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith was an excellent book. If you look at the cover, you can pretty much tell it would be classified as a "chick flick"----very much into the romance part. Overall it was a good book,and I would recommend reading it if you are into chick flicks
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Summary: enchanting
Review: "I Capture the Castle" is the 1930's coming-of-age story of 17-year-old Cassandra, who lives in rural Britain with a cast of simultaneously comic and tragic family and friends. During the spring, summer, and autumn months spanned by the story, she pens a diary that describes her first adult lessons about love, sisterhood, and friendship. Although the voice is believably adolescent, the lessons Cassandra learns are completely adult. "I Capture the Castle" is beautiful in every way a book should be. It's gentle without being sappy, humorous without being mocking, gorgeously (although a bit painstakingly) written without digressing into flights of narcissistic prose. The narrator is both an ordinary child and an extraordinary woman, and her greatest strength as a character is the believability of her weakness. The other characters are interesting and unusual and completely human. The setting, a barely-refurbished medieval castle, is very nearly a character in its own right, and it informs and interacts with the story in a way I've rarely seen outside of the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The book, with all of its lyricism and innocence and wise optimism, teaches a gentle and almost invisible lesson. It's about learning to love fairly and accept love gracefully, about being faithful to your friends even when it hurts, about who constitutes a family and how one goes about caring for them, about how growing up is not the end of a the road but the beginning. It's not a new lesson, but it's one we all need to learn a little more. But "I Capture the Castle" is more than a beautiful book, and more than a lesson. It's an experience. It's as if Jane Austen had been reborn 130 years later and rewritten "Sense and Sensibility" with a compassion and magic her original work missed. Or as if "Little Women" had been written for adults: just as so many little girls start their own "Pickwick Papers" and take to eating apples in attics after reading Alcott's book, after reading "I Capture the Castle" I wanted to find a ruin in Britain, fit it with indoor plumbing, and spend the timeless days of summer sitting in the tower and penning a journal of my own days and dreams and loves.
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Summary: Thanks to my friend!
Review: I was recommended this book by a friend who is a voracious reader. I forgot about it until working at the library, a copy fell into my hands. I remembered the friend, and borrowed the book. For several days I slowly read it and was mad at myself for having neglected this fine work. The narrator, Cassandra, is a girl on the brink of womanhood in the middle of a sad and terribly amusing dysfunctional family. Her family includes her genius of a father, who spends his days teetering on the brink of mental collapse; her stepmother, Topaz, a ridiculous woman with a heart of gold; Rose, the sister, heartless until her heart breaks; and their loyal servant, Stephen, who is the only one on the premises with the brains and brawn to earn the money they so need so badly. They live together in a beautiful ruin of a castle, caught in almost a dream of poverty, until one day two vistors arrive and change their future forever. I fell in love with Stephen, and I love this book!
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