I Capture the Castle
Dodie Smith
Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere.
Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fading glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas, and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer’s block.
However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time.
‘I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers’ Joanna Trollope
One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World
Reviews
A truly stunning book that deserves so much more than 5/5 stars. It had me gripping every page and I couldn't wait to find out what happened at the end. It had twists and turns and the ending was so unpredictable but so amazingly beautiful. My favourite character was Cassandra as she was not only the narrator of this text but a person who sees things the way they are but is still a bit confused. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who loves a love story with plot changes at almost every chapter. Sensational.
Major Hercules Sheep-Dip 08.08.2021
You should read this book because it help understand life issues. It is a young adult book so I would suggest this book for 11 and above
Anonymous 22.07.2017
This book was quite good but I found the story was a bit slow to get going. Other than that it was a really good read. Definitely recommend for older readers.
Anonymous 19.09.2014
MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!!! The Mortmain family is poor but exotic. Cassandra's father is a writer suffering from writer's block who has not published anything since his first book, Jacob Wrestling, an innovative and "difficult" novel that sold well and made his name, including in America. Ten years before the story begins, he took out a forty-year lease on a dilapidated but beautiful castle, hoping to find either inspiration or isolation there; now, his family is selling off the furniture to buy food. The widowed Mortmain's second wife, Topaz, is a beautiful artist's model who enjoys communing with nature, sometimes wearing nothing but hip boots. Rose, the elder daughter, is a classic English beauty pining away in the lonely castle, longing for a chance to meet some eligible (and preferably rich) young men; she tells her sister that she wants to live in a Jane Austen novel. Cassandra, the younger daughter and the story's narrator, has literary ambitions and spends a lot of time developing her writing talent by "capturing" everything around her in her journal. Stephen, the handsome, loyal, live-in son of the Mortmain's late cook, and Thomas, the youngest Mortmain child, round out the cast of household characters. Stephen, a "noble soul", is in love with Cassandra, which she finds touching, but a bit awkward; Thomas, a schoolboy, is, like Cassandra, considered "tolerably bright" |When the some Americans come to visit, they find that they are rich, and may just save them from their poverty.
Anonymous 05.07.2014
