I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith: A Modern Classic

Title: I Capture The Castle

Author: Dodie Smith

Publication Date: 1948

Description:

Now a major motion picture from the Academy Award-winning producer of Shakespeare in Love

I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"--and the heart of the reader--in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.

My Review:

I admit that going into this story I was a little skeptical about the writing style and the story having been compared to a Jane Austen novel. I have personally never read Austen and thought a little more modern take might help me ease into the classic author. 

I am so elated I started here. Smith tells the story of a peculiar family whose patriarch decided on a whim to live in an old castle in hopes of fixing it up. The head of the household was once a famous philosophical writer who married an artist muse as his second wife.

He has 3 children, two girls and a boy. After the residuals of his writing career run out the family lives in poverty and the only thing he does all day is read detective novels and crossword puzzles his oldest daughter resigns to be married and help the family in any way she can. Then the original owners of the castle show up and happen to be two handsome young men, one of great wealth.

The hi-jinks pick up from there with unrequited love, embarrassing moments, kisses, family squabbles and more all told by Cassandra the youngest daughter of the house. 

As a narrator Cassandra is charming and blissfully naive in a way that makes you feel like she is young and innocent of the world and in a lot of ways she is. When you realize she is 18 it gives you an idea of how different the times where. 

I loved the descriptions of the quiet English village and really just enjoyed the writing overall even though the language used was a little old fashioned. I think I will definitely be picking up more by Dodie Smith and this has encouraged me to pick up Austen and other romantic female writers of the past and I would recommend this book to anyone who asked. 

Star Rating:

4.25 out of 5

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