Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain lives in a run-down castle with her older sister (the beautiful Rose), younger brother (the mostly absent at school Thomas), family factotum and would-be swain Stephen, eccentric erstwhile writer father James and equally eccentric step-mother (glamorous former model Topaz). Cassandra has just learned to speed write, and begins a journal, partly for practice and partly to hone her writing skills. What she cannot know is that her family’s peaceable, albeit increasingly poverty stricken, lives will be inexorably changed by the arrival in town of the new owner of Belmotte, American Simon Cotton and his brother Neil.
Smith is the author of A Hundred and One Dalmatians, and it’s less well known sequel The Starlight Barking, both of which I devoured as a child. But for some reason I never tackled I Capture the Castle, even though it opens with the wonderfully evocative line” I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in the it; the rest of me is on the draining board.” Published in the late 1940’s, and set in the mid ‘thirties, ICtC is a beautiful and involving novel that perfectly captures its time and the sensibilities of the era. It is delightfully British, its heroine captivating and its portrayals of the characters warm and sympathetic. It probably didn’t hurt that it opens in winter, with a long section about the joys of hot water baths when all around you is cold, which I read in the bath. This is a classic novel for young adults, and deservedly so – I thoroughly enjoyed it, even at this late arrival to it. – Alex
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