Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
An absorbing, must-have book for any advanced teenage reader, 17 Mar 2002
Dodie Smith is world renowned for writing 101 Dalmatians and The Starlight Barking, but her deep and expressive writing talent is revealed in I Capture The Castle, which was written in 1949 and is set in 1930s Britain. I think that you can tell if a book is good or not, by whether it has that magical touch- you're suddenly jolted back to life and you realise that you were there, that you were a spectator on this world of fiction. I Capture The Castle indeed has this rare power, and I longed for little snippets of time in which I could let myself be transported through the pages of this creation. As you read you can smell the smells, speak the words, and feel the atmosphere. You get to know the characters, and you start to discover their natures through the narrative. The book is a set of three diaries written by the seventeen year old character of Cassandra Mortmain, expressing her perspective on her slightly eccentric family, life, and love. Her family consists of her father who is a writer and is portrayed as being mad, her step-mother, Topaz, who models for nude paintings and communes with nature, and her elder twenty-one year old sister Rose, who is beautiful but unfortunately vain and bored with her life. Lastly there is Stephen Colly, a gardener-boy who has, in effect, been adopted into the family, and who is madly in love with Cassandra. The reason that I chose this book for my review is that it is so captivating. It is a book that is simply impossible to put down and leaves you feeling that you want to start all over again and re-live the story.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
My desert island book., 11 Sep 1999
By A Customer
It was one of the only books available to me in a kind of 'teenage' category when I was growing up in the early 60's. How I still remember the delight of discovering this wonderful book, and it's opening sentence of Cassandra sitting with her feet in the kitchen sink. Recently on a long drive through France I treated myself to the audio version of this book, exquisitely read by Janet Maw, and my two young daughters were totally transfixed. How can begin to explain the appeal of this book, to both the quite young (both my girls are under 11) and to men (my husband enjoyed it too). The secret must lie in the endearing character of Cassandra, the narrator, and the amusing and bohemian characters with which her world is peopled, her quixotic family and the love interest from the neighbouring stately home! I recommend it to both young and old, and I am spurred to write this review, on going to Amazon to buy get a copy for the house and for my young teenage babysitter who has the joy of reading it for the first time to come!!
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
Captured by "Castle", 30 Jun 2005
I am very tired, I have had a total of 3 hours sleep because of this book. When others reviewing this book described it as "unputdownable" I didn't realise how literally they meant it; I really wouldn't have been able to sleep until I finished this wonderful story about the exploits of Cassandra Mortmain, her family and various acquaintances. The beginning of the book, whilst not being as absolutely enthralling as the rest of the story is fabulous. This only bodes well for Dodie Smith's wonderful storytelling; the book gets better and better all the way through and seeing as this starts with the line "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink" this means that the opening is but a small indication at how splendidly eccentric the entire story is. I have a very bad habit indeed, I do not encourage others to pick this habit up. I (without fail) read the last page before coming to the end of the book. I know, it's dreadful! Usually this habit doesn't cause any problems, I can satisfy my curiosity without having really been told anything. Most novels finish by "tying up the loose ends" and I'm often not sure what they are referring to anyway. Not this time, I knew exactly what was going to happen and it tore at my heart so much I started periodically throwing the book down with frustration. The ending is distressingly sad and beautiful, but I wouln't have it any other way. I cannot describe adequately just how many chords this book has struck with me, and the secret is not the plot, which could take place in any book, but Dodie Smith's heart-wrenching writing style. Her "consciously naive" character Cassandra is a fantastic creation and incredibly believable. As a girl of her age, I find myself feeling similar things roughly 70 years later; I found this book to be incredibly modern and, living in the countryside, could imagine this taking place down the road. One difference though, I love Stephen. :( Smith has a wonderfully sharp wit which she manages to convey with Cassandra's innocent outlook on life mingled with her rather blunt, adult perceptions of certain events. One thing I do know is that this book is going to be passed down through the generations for a longer time yet than it already has. It truly is timeless.
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