Every so often, a reader unexpectedly comes across a real gem of a book. So I did, with Dodie Smith's
I Capture the Castle.
Set on the English countryside in the 1930's, seventeen year old Cassandra Mortmain begins the story by recording her peculiar life in a half-penny journal. Living in a state of more or less comfortable poverty in a crumbling castle that is her home, Cassandra is surrounded by a colorful backdrop of characters. From her detached, eccentric father who once wrote a bestselling book but has given up writing, to her loving but maudlin stepmother, Topaz, who likes to take moonlit walks dressed in nothing at all, to her beautiful but melancholy sister Rose, life at the castle is never quite normal.
Cassandra and her family are unexpectedly met with a stroke of fortune when their poverty is at its worst. American brothers, Simon and Neil Cotton, show up at the castle as the new landlords. Rose immediately launches a plan to have one fall in love with her to escape her life, but Cassandra remains in the background, quietly observing the changes that occur. Her life is also about to change, drastically.
I fell in love with the characters and setting, but most of all with the marvelous insight of the narrator. Dodie Smith created a real treasure in a such a narrator as Cassandra. I could not put this book down, and even after finishing it I find myself revisiting the story in my mind.
