All Because of the Kitchen Sink (I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith)

Member Name: maui2919

Product:	I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Date:	01/12/08 (41 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Just one of those books that make you smile :)

Disadvantages: Slow-Starter

I am a teenager and am of the audience that this book was intended for. Or was It? "I Capture the Castle" is a wonderful book about,,, well everything! You go right along with the narrator, and main character extraordinaire, Cassandra Mortmain, as she learns to speed write, kiss and be brisk.

Her family lives in an old, run-down castle in 1930's England. Known as Godsend Castle to the townsfolk, Cassandra and her family moved there when she was a small girl and her mother was still alive. Shortly after her mother's death her father, known as Mortmain, stops writing and becomes a recluse. The money from his first book "Jacob Wrestling" is gone and the family is forced to sell furniture. But before life goes completely down the tubes Mortmain marries Topaz, a wonderfully eccentric model and artist with a taste for nudity. Life goes on getting slowly worse until the day we begin the story in the kitchen sink. Yes, the kitchen sink. You see the book is written in diary form and Cassandra can find such good light from the window above the sink that that is where we first meet her.

Cassandra and her older sister, Rose share a room upstairs with ms. blossom (whom you will have to read the book to find out more about). Rose, though not entirely self-centered, cannot stand their way of life and is determined to find a wealthy and suitable husband to whisk her away from poverty. Now enter the Cotton brothers. Simon and Neil Cotton are the American relatives of an old man who owns both Godsend Castle and Scoatney Hall. When the man dies and the brothers come to claim the Scoatney estate they trek to Godsend (also their property) to find our heroine in a bathtub up to her arms in green dye. Rose and Simon fall instantly into "love" and began planning wedding details. However, only after her first dinner party and some very influencing cherry brandy does Cassandra realize that she is deeply in love with Simon.

Now comes the final, fantastic drama that I can't tell you about! Don't cha love it! You should, I did. This book, though slow-paced at first is an amazing tale about family rows, and first loves. Breaking it off with one, while hooking it up with another. You follow Cassandra, her father Topaz, Rose, her brother Thomas and her dear (maybe more than) friend Stephan through all the changes that come in her life, all because of the kitchen sink.

Summary: Cassandra is not self-centered