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I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
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A beautiful hardcover cloth bound gift edition deserving of a place in every home.
Set in the idyllic English countryside of the 1940's, this is the diary of Cassandra Mortmain which tells of her extraordinary family and their life in a ramshackle castle. First, there is her eccentric father. Then there is her beautiful sister, Rose; vain, bored and desperate to marry and escape from her crumbling family home. Their stepmother Topaz, an artist's model and nudist, with a flair for wondering the castle grounds uninhibited by the constraints of modern clothing. Finally, there is Stephen, dazzlingly handsome and hopelessly in love with Cassandra.
But all their lives are soon transformed by the arrival of new, wealthy neighbours from America and Cassandra finds herself falling in love.
- Sales Rank: #1492974 in Books
- Published on: 2013-12-24
- Released on: 2013-12-24
- Format: International Edition
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: 7.24" h x 1.85" w x 5.31" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 576 pages
Amazon.com Review
Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain wants to become a writer. Trouble is, she's the daughter of a once-famous author with a severe case of writer's block. Her family--beautiful sister Rose, brooding father James, ethereal stepmother Topaz--is barely scraping by in a crumbling English castle they leased when times were good. Now there's very little furniture, hardly any food, and just a few pages of notebook paper left to write on. Bravely making the best of things, Cassandra gets hold of a journal and begins her literary apprenticeship by refusing to face the facts. She writes, "I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic, two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud."
Rose longs for suitors and new tea dresses while Cassandra scorns romance: "I know all about the facts of life. And I don't think much of them." But romantic isolation comes to an end both for the family and for Cassandra's heart when the wealthy, adventurous Cotton family takes over the nearby estate. Cassandra is a witty, pensive, observant heroine, just the right voice for chronicling the perilous cusp of adulthood. Some people have compared I Capture the Castle to the novels of Jane Austen, and it's just as well-plotted and witty. But the Mortmains are more bohemian--as much like the Addams Family as like any of Austen's characters. Dodie Smith, author of 101 Dalmations, wrote this novel in 1948. And though the story is set in the 1930s, it still feels fresh, and well deserves its reputation as a modern classic. --Maria Dolan
Review
• "The appeal of the book is that of a time of innocence... When a girl of 17 could still be all but untouched by sexuality. At the same time it captures the pangs of growing up and unrequited first love." --Observer
• "When I read I Capture the Castle it immediately became one of my favourite novels of all time, and I was very annoyed that nobody had told me about it before." --J.K Rowling
From the Publisher
"I Capture the Castle is finally back in print. It should be welcomed with a bouquet of roses and a brass band. Ever since I was handed a tattered copy years ago with the recommendation 'You'll love it,' it has been one of my favorite novels. Cassandra Mortmain is one hell of a narrator, offering sharp wit, piercing insight and touching lyricism. She is a heroine we readers wish we could be, a young woman it is impossible not to adore." --Susan Isaacs
"Dreamy and funny...an odd, shimmering timelessness clings to its pages. A thousand and one cheers for its reissue. A+" --Entertainment Weekly
"It is an occasion worth celebrating when a sparkling novel, a work of wit, irony and feeling is brought back into print after an absence of many years. So uncork the champagne for I Capture the Castle." --Los Angeles Times
"It's as fresh as if it were written this morning and as classic as Jane Austen. I'm very happy to have met it." --Donald Westlake
"A delicious, compulsively readable novel about young love and its vicissitudes. What fun!" --Erica Jong
"Much more fun than the reader has any right to expect." --The Weekly Standard
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Cassandra Listens to Miss Blossom in The Ruins of Godys
By Pippin O' Rohan
Every year when an American friend of mine stays with relatives in London early Spring, she pays a visit to a Mrs. Ferber in Dorset Square. They have been acquainted for decades and it has become an annual ritual which she always looks forward to with the greatest of pleasure. The elder and kindly Mrs. Ferber over time has become one of her finest literary mentors, and after they speak about news overseas at tea, they engage in a lively discussion of old and new books that are to be commended and exchanged.
Maeve, for that is the name of my friend, once told me that if it had not been for Mrs. Ferber, she would hardly be able to string a sentence together in English. So out of curiosity, I asked her on her return to New York what was Mrs. Ferber's latest reading suggestion. Maeve smiled and promptly replied: "I Capture The Castle" (1948), by a British author Dodie Smith because it reminded Mrs. Ferber of some early anecdotes Maeve had relayed to her in the past, and most of all, because it is a bright and intelligent delight in itself. Never having heard of it, I naturally asked Maeve for more details as I sensed her enthusiasm, and she is a great one for the books.
"I'll try to give you what is known as an 'ice-breaker', or I'll go off on a rambling essay", she began. 'I Capture The Castle' is a fictional autobiographical diary, and I recognized all the people in the book because they are real, as real as could be. You and I have met them at some point along the way from past experience and roads traveled together. As for the story, two English sisters, Cassandra and Rose Mortmain, are brought up in the 30s by their flamboyant father and young eclectic stepmother, Topaz, in an old Tudor house built among the ruins of a Norman castle that was destroyed during Cromwell's time. The younger sister, Cassandra, now seventeen begins her entry: "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink", and proceeds to call her family 'The Ruined Mortmains'. Her father, a passionate lion of a man and an author, wrote a big splash that was an original and intellectual sensation pre-Joyce's Ulysses and made a fortune with it in America among its readership".
"For a variety of reasons that Cassandra explains at the opening of her journal, the Mortmain Household is now in rack and ruins, hungry and cold, and her irascible and solitary father spends his time holed up in the gatehouse, reading detective novels on loan from the small village library. Rose, her older sister at twenty-one, is a magnificent and fearless beauty, trapped in what she calls a 'crumbling sea of mud'. A realist and born to spread her wings, she finds nothing romantic about their life-style. There is also in this circle a younger brother Thomas, and finally Stephen Colly adopted by the family when his mother died, a native of the village who works hard to keep them all afloat. And then as dark clouds continue to descend on the increasingly impoverished castle, two American brothers, Simon and Neil Cotton, inheritors of the neighboring Estate Manor, show up on the scene".
Here Maeve paused for the longest time. "Well?", I asked her, expecting more of a summary. But what Maeve knew she was not about to reveal, leaving me in literary shadows. After a slight nudge on my part, she finally added with a wry laugh: "In many ways, it reminded me of such true stories at that age, but what if I were to tell you that I have yet to enjoy a novel so similar, and yet different to 'Pride and Prejudice' before? As for the two sisters, Cassandra and Rose in Dodie Smith's narrative, they are able to identify with Jane Austen's novel at once on the arrival of the brothers and inheritors of the near-by Scoatny Hall. There is also a Miss Blossom in this scenario, and she might serve as a helpful reminder to many of us when we listen to her today at a more mature age, reminding us how life at times has a singular way of falling into place. And, here I plan to tell you no more, except that it gave me a great deal to think about".
'I Capture The Castle' has great elements of joy, at times sadness and growing-pains, tenderness, threads of ongoing realities that we are all faced with at a young age, sometimes later, with thoughts on how we wish to live, laced with musings on altruism, religion, romance, fortune, beauty, art and music, psychology, the difference in etiquette and ways between the British and Americans, and more. But, what makes this famous novel rare and unusual is that the young and particularly engaging bright Cassandra knows what it is to be loved and to love, with genuine passion at the conclusion of this satisfying story.
With fond memories of Holly Park today now extant - all a bit of a wonderful fairy tale, while thanking Dodie Smith (1896-1990) for writing so honestly and brilliantly from her own observations, imagination and vantage point about this transitional passage of youth in our lives.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Evocative writing and an interesting story
By Christopher E
This is certainly a period piece, set in the 1930's, so while it's somewhat old fashioned in its feel, the writing is some of the most evocative I've read. It's not action packed by any means, and it's entirely first person, but it reads quickly and I found it very enjoyable. I appreciated that some elements if found in another book would have had predictable outcomes, while here they are not entirely predictable yet also manage to avoid the trap of implausible twists.
The story is entirely set in England but it's also got a few American characters. That adds an additional element of interest for American readers with English ties, or vice versa. There is one stretch that's a bit melodramatic (meloromatic?) for my taste, but it's an important element that ultimately works well. If you find yourself struggling to maintain interest through that section just push through and know that it's not interminable.
I find myself reading many more novels by male authors than female, but I found this female voice, both the author's and the protagonist's, to be a refreshing change of pace. I'm not saying this is a 5-star read, but I do think it is very good.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Lovely, original heroine
By Summerroll
"I sit writing in the kitchen sink." So starts one of the funniest, most original heroines of the coming of age tale.
Dodie Smith, the author of the charming "101 Dalmatians," published "I Capture the Castle" in 1948. The story is a revelry told by Cassandra Mortmain, a 17-year-old girl living with her family in the English countryside. Her father, once a literary darling, suffers from a 12-year writing block which he treats as a mental enemy hovering over Life--- a writing block that is both an internal and external enemy, consigning them to poverty, threatening the family's existence. Cassandra's older sister Rose is a great beauty with a steely eye on reality, cognizant of her beauty, determined to use it to escape her poverty. They live with their father's second wife, Topaz, a bohemian beauty and an artist's model, who now must serve as the glue that holds the family together. The "Ruined Mortmains" live in a dilapidated house next to a ruined Normal castle, a wondrous metaphor that can represent different things to each character. It is an escape for Cassandra's father, where he goes for "inspiration" but also for brooding and escape. It served as a play space for Cassandra and her sister when they were young. It has a reputation of being haunted. It is also a symbol of the past, both the personal past of the family and the distant, Celtic and druidic past of rural England, which was once magnificent and now broken, untended, forgotten. Only a ghost of the past lingers, and only the living can revive it.
The story's action starts when two American brother move in next door. They call on their English neighbors and are immediately enthralled with Rose's beauty. Cassandra observes everything with her writerly senses, noting not only the style and cut of fabrics signifying wealth and glamor, but also the feelings of eyes, the half smiles, the attention paid, the charisma and the allure of each character. She is the ideal reporter, having the intense feelings and observations of an adolescent, and the articulate, droll observations of a journalist. She has read her Austen AND her Shakespeare--- and has understood them.
Other reviewers have summarized the directions that the story's plot takes, and I will not go into detail. Her father's writer's block is the central obstacle; their impoverishment, like the central conflict of Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" or "Pride and Prejudice," entrap the girls in a socially untenable position: too intelligent to beg, too poor to rebel. The father's irresponsibility underscores the missing maternal figure. One of my favorite characters in the book is the step-mother, Topaz, who is complexly drawn, both a carefree artist (with notions of dancing in the rain, flowing robes etc.) and a caring, listening adult in a largely adolescent world. She has read her Shakespeare too!
My favorite scene of the book is Cassandra's Mayfair celebration, which comes late in the novel. The scene is a quiet one-person celebration of spring, a re-enactment of a druidic rite, an appreciation of the powers of nature (both the arboreal natural world, and human nature prone to love and disappointment), and an illustration of Cassandra's sublimation of her yearning and pain into art. It is the site of a rite of passage, as well. The scene is so tenderly, beautifully done, that it makes me tearful just thinking about it.
Cassandra's intelligence is as beautifully shown in the book as Rose's physical beauty. This "Little Women" echo of competition between sisters is written with honesty. The physical comparisons are not done with jealousy, but are also not without pain. It is central to the conflict of the book, to Cassandra's emotional journey. And it is a fair depiction of every girl as she realizes that she will be judged by physical appearance for the rest of her life. In her charming and gentle way, Dodie Smith has rebuked this notion: Cassandra is the main character of the story, and of our sympathies. She has captured the castle of our imagination.
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