I Capture The Castle

Product Information

My imagination longs to dash ahead and plan developments; but I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself." I shall have to get off the draining-board—Topaz wants the tea-cosy and our dog, Heloïse, has come in and discovered I have borrowed her blanket. She is a bull-terrier, snowy white except where her fondant-pink skin shows through her short hair. All right, Heloïse darling, you shall have your blanket. She gazes at me with love, reproach, confidence and humour—how can she express so much just with two rather small slanting eyes? When he came out he was as nice a man as ever—nicer, because his temper was so much better. Apart from that, he didn’t seem to me to be changed at all. But Rose remembers that he had already begun to get unsociable—it was then that he took a forty years’ lease of the castle, which is an admirable place to be unsociable in. Once we were settled here he was supposed to begin a new book. But time went on without anything happening and at last we realized that he had given up even trying to write—for years now, he has refused to discuss the possibility. Most of his life is spent in the gatehouse room, which is icy cold in winter as there is no fireplace; he just huddles over an oil-stove. As far as we know, he does nothing but read detective novels from the village library. Miss Marcy, the librarian and schoolmistress, brings them to him. She admires him greatly and says “the iron has entered into his soul.” If I say that this novel didn't require me to do any work, it sounds like a vague insult, as if I'm saying that the story or the characters were slight, and that's not at all what I mean. I mean that the novel, both through format (a very self-aware narrator's journal) and authorial intent (with a firm eye on the sort of story-telling pedigree that brought her there), anticipated my readerly needs and desires with such swiftness that I felt agreeably anticipatory and satisfied at all times. I did not have to tell myself to be patient to wait for one plot line to play out, because the book helpfully plied me with a pleasant drink while I waited. I did not feel done after it had given me a good meal, because right before the last course, it promised dessert.

too much lovey-dovey stuff, not enough practical instruction on the day-to-day of castle acquisition. Through Cassandra’s sharply funny, yet poignant, journal entries, she chronicles 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 novels.

Retailers:

It is raining again. Stephen is coming across the courtyard. He has lived with us ever since he was a little boy—his mother used to be our maid, in the days when we could still afford one, and when she died he had nowhere to go. He grows vegetables for us and looks after the hens and does a thousand odd jobs—I can’t think how we should get on without him. He is eighteen now, very fair and noble-looking but his expression is just a fraction daft. He has always been rather devoted to me; father calls him my swain. He is rather how I imagine Silvius in As You Like It—but I am nothing like Phoebe. I Capture the Castle is Cassandra’s diary. She’s an aspiring author, and she is setting out to capture in words the ruined castle where she lives with her family, in the middle of the English countryside in the 1930s. When the Mortmains moved into the castle, the plan was for it to be a romantic and bohemian home, maintained on the royalties earned by Cassandra’s novelist father, a high modernist James Joycean type — but he stopped writing years ago, the royalties from his first book dried up, and now the castle is dreary and crumbling. The originators among writers--perhaps, in a sense, the only true creators--dip deep and bring up one perfect work; complete, not a link in a chain." On the word God: "It's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about." Born Dorothy Gladys Smith in Lancashire, England, Dodie Smith was raised in Manchester (her memoir is titled A Childhood in Manchester). She was just an infant when her father died, and she grew up fatherless until age 14, when her mother remarried and the family moved to London. There she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and tried for a career as an actress, but with little success. She finally wound up taking a job as a toy buyer for a furniture store to make ends meet. Giving up dreams of an acting career, she turned to writing plays, and in 1931 her first play, Autumn Crocus, was published (under the pseudonym “C.L. Anthony”). It was a success, and her story — from failed actress to furniture store employee to successful writer — captured the imagination of the public and she was featured in papers all over the country. Although she could now afford to move to a London townhouse, she didn't get caught up in the “literary” scene — she married a man who was a fellow employee at the furniture store.

Stephen is lighting the lamp. In a second now, the rosy glow will have gone from the kitchen. But lamplight is beautiful, too. But the Mortmains aren’t really living in a marriage plot novel, as much as Cassandra likes to think that they are. They’re living in the intersection between a marriage plot novel and a modernist novel, and their story soon fractures in ways Cassandra doesn’t expect. Rose finds that she isn’t in love with Simon, Cassandra finds that she is, and their father’s long-dormant writing career begins to awaken and grow and develop in ways that Cassandra finds confusing and frightening, just as Rose’s love story begins to fall apart. We both prayed hard, Rose the much longest — she was still on her knees when I had settled down ready to sleep. “That’ll do, Rose,” I said at last. “It’s enough just to mention things, you know. Long prayers are like nagging.” It is comforting to look away from the windows and towards the kitchen fire, near which my sister Rose is ironing—though she obviously can’t see properly, and it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.) Rose looks particularly fetching by firelight because she is a pinkish person; her skin has a pink glow and her hair is pinkish gold, very light and feathery. Although I am rather used to her I know she is a beauty. She is nearly twenty-one and very bitter with life. I am seventeen, look younger, feel older. I am no beauty but have a neatish face. I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers' - Joanna Trollope

Select a format:

The first half of this was like Jane Austen herself descended from the heavens (godlike) and delivered me, personally, a gift. On 5 November 2019, the BBC News listed I Capture the Castle on its list of the 100 most influential novels. [8]

Gioia, Michael (24 January 2013). "Pace University Will Offer Free Concert Readings of Drew Gasparini and Alex Brightman's Make Me Bad Musical". Playbill . Retrieved 2 October 2021. I Capture the Castle is that kind of book. It’s not quite famous, even among Smith’s works (her most famous title would be 101 Dalmati a ns), but for a certain kind of reader — mostly women, mostly bookish — it is perfect. Once you read it, you fall in love with it, and from then on you’re part of a secret club, self-selecting and wildly enthusiastic. A musical adaptation with book and lyrics by Teresa Howard and music by Steven Edis received its staged premiere at the Watford Palace Theatre in April 2017. It was directed by Brigid Larmour. [6]

Did we miss something on diversity?

Smith’s I Capture the Castle is a delightful read as it is both poignantly dramatic, even tragic at times, but also laugh-out-loud funny. The earnestness with which Cassandra and her sister Rose approach life and love perfectly captures the drama of first love as childhood blurs into adulthood. And while the Mortmain sisters may blunder in love, Cassandra’s coming-of-age inspires her own literary pursuits as well as those of her father.