I Capture The Castle

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This is not even my sometimes-bias against romance showing. (Except okay maybe it is a little bit.) But in this book we go from a quirky ragtag family living in a dilapidated CASTLE in the English COUNTRYSIDE to...unrequited love. And sisterly hate. And family separation. And heartbreak and betrayal and sorrow and a whole lot of other things.

Gioia, Michael (24 January 2013). "Pace University Will Offer Free Concert Readings of Drew Gasparini and Alex Brightman's Make Me Bad Musical". Playbill . Retrieved 2 October 2021. Only 122 words and you have a character there, speaking in your ear: honest, funny, contradictory, alive. There’s that famous first line of course, but more than that, the way she conveys the character and her milieu without it feeling stagey. We learn that what we’re reading is the journal of 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, an aspiring novelist. Letters and diaries as a device in fiction tend to make me itchy (and novels about novelists normally bring me out in a rash): it’s just so difficult to get right. Often you get a diary or a letter that doesn’t read like one, or if by some chance it does, flattens out the storytelling. But what Smith does is make that voice the creator of the world. Things come into being through their relationship to her and we never doubt any of it for a moment. The final lines of the book, as Cassandra fills the last space, are a throb of some­thing so nebulous as to be ghostlike After Disney released the film rights to the novel in the late 1990s, Heidi Thomas wrote a screen adaptation. [4] This resulted in a 2003 feature film directed by Tim Fywell for BBC Films. It starred Romola Garai as Cassandra.I Capture the Castle is that kind of book. It’s not quite famous, even among Smith’s works (her most famous title would be 101 Dalmati a ns), but for a certain kind of reader — mostly women, mostly bookish — it is perfect. Once you read it, you fall in love with it, and from then on you’re part of a secret club, self-selecting and wildly enthusiastic. Sacrifice is the secret--you have to sacrifice things for art and it's the same with religions; and then the sacrifice turns out to be a gain." Very conversational and meandering. The main character grated quite a bit on me, with the continuous “I want something badly, but it never is going to happen” and “Oh, it happened, but I didn’t end up taking the opportunity because I like drama/I just don’t know” vibe. The characters are rather exuberant in how they are portrayed by Dodie Smith, Topaz for instance is tall and pale as a slightly dead goddess. It’s a club whose members daydream about dyeing all their clothes green, as the penniless Mortmain family does when they can’t afford to buy anything new, and drinking cherry brandy outside an English country village inn, the way 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain does with her sister and her sister’s two suitors.

Every time I meet someone who also loves I Capture the Castle,” writes Jenny Han in her foreword to the new edition of Dodie Smith’s 1948 classic, “I know we must be kindred spirits.”I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers' - Joanna Trollope too much lovey-dovey stuff, not enough practical instruction on the day-to-day of castle acquisition. Stephen is lighting the lamp. In a second now, the rosy glow will have gone from the kitchen. But lamplight is beautiful, too. I finish this entry sitting on the stairs. I think it worthy of note that I never felt happier in my life—despite sorrow for father, pity for Rose, embarrassment about Stephen’s poetry and no justification for hope as regards our family’s general outlook. Perhaps it is because I have satisfied my creative urge; or it may be due to the thought of eggs for tea.

I mean, it’s all very upper class white people problems. Oh no, we can’t afford our castle. Oh no, Rose is behaving in a socially awkward manner to an American. Oh no, we’re all in love with the wrong person.At one point in the novel, unaware that she is listening in, Simon wonders whether Cassandra is being “consciously naive” i.e. putting it on as a show to attract people. She is incensed, and rightly so; because if there is one thing to be said for the girl, it is her perfect honesty about everything including herself! For example, you have respect a person who can say that a piece by Bach made her feel that she was being repeatedly hit on the head by a teaspoon! I Capture the Castle was a disappointment. The blurb had lead me to believe that I was going to experience the pleasures of living in a beautiful castle, steeped in history, with a charming story weaving in perfectly with that castle, lead by our narrator, Cassandra. Unfortunately, that isn't what I experienced. There was a lot I didn't enjoy about this book, but I'll start with the positive. When Cassandra falls in love, her personality goes out of the window. She becomes quite self-centred, odd and her usual optimistic manner on life, disappears. I found this to be depressing, and not enjoyable to read about. The rain is driving hard against the window now. My candle makes it seem quite dark outside. And the far side of the kitchen is dimmer now that the kettle is on the round hole in the top of the range. The girls are sitting on the floor making toast through the bars. There is a bright edge to each head, where the firelight shines through their hair.