Synopses & Reviews
This enchanting novel tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her unusual family who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Cassandras eccentric father is a writer whose first book took the literary world by storm but he has since failed to write a single word and now spends his time reading detective fiction. Cassandras sister, Rose, despairs of her familys circumstances and determines to marry their affluent American landlord. She is helped and, sometimes, hindered in this by their bohemian stepmother, an artists model who likes to commune with nature. Finally there is Stephen who is hopelessly in love with Cassandra. Amid this maelstrom Cassandra hones her writing skills, candidly capturing the events that take place within the castles walls, and her own first descent into love.
Synopsis
'This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met' J K Rowling
'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up.
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**
About the Author
Dodie (Dorothy) Smith was born in 1896 in Northern England. Although she studied drama, she turned her talents to writing, successfully submitting a screenplay to a silent movie company and writing the script for Autumn Crocus, which opened in 1931 to rave reviews. In 1934, Dodie's husband Alec brought home a Dalmatian puppy named Pongo, a gift that would eventually inspire her to write on of the greatest works of literature today.
Reading Group Guide
1. As
I Capture the Castle is made up of Cassandra's diaries, she is "captured" in the novel just as much as she herself endeavours to "capture" life in the castle. In what ways does Cassandra change during the months the novel covers?
2. "'Which would be nicest - Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?"' Cassandra repeatedly refers to Pride and Prejudice and some reviews also make a connection between I Capture the Castle and Jane Austen. Can you identify examples of the influence of Jane Austen and/or Charlotte Brontë in Dodie Smith's writing? How do the other references to literature in the novel affect your reading?
3. Consider the attitudes to class depicted in the novel. In what ways can the Mortmains be seen to be a particularly modern family and in what ways do their attitudes reflect the standards of the time?
4. "The only Henry James novel I ever tried to read was What Maisie Knew, when I was about nine - I expected it to be a book for children." I Capture the Castle is seen as a classic example of crossover literature which appeals to both adults and children. What other examples of this sort of writing have you come across and how do they compare with I Capture the Castle?
5. Compare Cassandra's feelings about her home and the countryside with her experiences in London?
6. "It is a pity that Simon is the heir, because Rose thinks the beard is disgusting; but perhaps we can get it off." How do you feel about the way men are portrayed in this novel?