Dodie Smith Captures the Castle (I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith)

Member Name: devevre

Product:	I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Date:	03/02/03 (882 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Suitable for any age, Beautifully written, Easy to read

Disadvantages: No sequel!

The term "children's fiction" is misleading. A good book is one which is still a good book, no matter how old you are when you read it. The very best books written for children or adolescents are often the ones that are also successful with an adult audience.

So it was with Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. I opened the book entirely by accident, sighing over the lack of good books in the house that I was staying at. "Dodie Smith wrote 101 Dalmations," my best friend said helpfully. I grimaced. A book by a children's author who inspired a Disney film?

But I opened the first page... and was convinced that I Capture the Castle was well worth reading. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink," the novel begins. I didn't look back, but sped through the pages, increasingly delighted.

I Capture the Castle is the fictional diary of seventeen year-old Cassandra Mortmain. She lives in a falling-down castle in the 1930s, and at the beginning of the novel she is waiting for something - anything - to happen. Her loveably eccentric family consists of her stunningly beautiful sister Rose, their hopelessly insolvent writer's-block-stricken father, their endearingly odd (nudist!) stepmother Topaz, and their beloved cat (Abelard) and dog (Heloise). Of course, the novel is about what does happen after Cassandra wishes for something to happen.

The beginning of "something happening" involves two Americans, our narrator having accidentally dyed her arms green, and a shower curtain. I won't say any more about it, in the hopes that you will be intrigued enough to read for yourself what happens next.

J.K Rowling called Cassandra "the most charismatic narrator" that she had come across - the quote features prominently on the front of the book, which has just been re-issued. Dodie Smith has created an impossibly loveable, gawky but beautiful teenager, who is impossible to forget once you have read the book. I just wish that the book had a sequel, because I miss knowing what happens next.

It is a magical and impossibly fantastic but oddly believable book. It is funny, heart-wrenching, and romantic in turn. Although the setting (1930s England) is now somewhat dated, it is very easy to relate to. It is just familiar enough to recognise the very human emotions, but also just alien enough to force your imagination to work vividly. It is unlike anything that I have ever read, but it compares well with classic coming-of-age novels like Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Little Women, or any of the magical Emily of New Moon books. I think that it would have appealed to me as a young adolescent, but the remarkable thing is that it still appeals to me now. I love it, I would read it again and again, and I would buy it for anyone from eight to infinity years old.

I have been so pleasantly surprised by this book. I advise it to anyone who wants to be pleasantly surprised. It is refreshingly unpretentious but at the same time very well-written. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

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