I Capture the Castle (original 1948; edition 1999)

Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain lives in a real English castle with her 20-year-old sister, 15-year-old brother, their father and stepmother, and 18-year-old orphan Stephen. Cassandra's writer father has suffered from writer's block for many years, leaving the family in dire financial straits. Things begin to look up with the arrival of their new neighbors, twenty-something bachelor brothers.

This coming-of-age story isn't quite what I expected. I thought it would be similar to books like Anne of Green Gables or A Girl of the Limberlost, but it deals with more adult themes than those books do. Cassandra seems a little too childish for a 17-year-old, even in the 1930s. Her behavior reminds me a lot of almost-tweve-year-old Flavia de Luce from Alan Bradley's mystery series. Although I like Cassandra, my favorite character is her somewhat unconventional stepmother, Topaz. Cassandra is an aspiring writer, but she's also a budding philosopher, and the book is full of quote-worthy passages like “Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing”. I'll never love Cassandra in the way that I do Anne Shirley or Flavia de Luce, but it's still been worthwhile getting to know her. I might even re-read her story one day. ( )

This is a book that has become one of the classic British comic novels, and it’s one that I loved at once when I first read it, many years ago. I was a bit nervous about re-reading it: would the eccentric charm have worn off? - I needn't have worried. It stands up to the passage of time very well. In fact, I'm probably more susceptible to Cassandra’s carefully calibrated naivety now than I was thirty-five years ago.

What is apparent when you re-read it is that it is a very technically-sophisticated piece of writing. Smith has to work very hard behind the scenes to keep up the illusion of seventeen-year-old Cassandra scribbling away in her notebooks as events unfold around her. (And to borrow plot ideas shamelessly from Jane Austen.) It's all very cunningly arranged, so that you scarcely catch a glimpse of the stage machinery whirring away behind the scenes, but when you look closely you see that you are in a theatre and watching a well-made play, in which every actor has a part proportioned exactly to his or her importance, every prop and feature of the scenery is used for something at the relevant moment. And every bit of charm and nostalgia has a suitably deflating joke attached to it in the proper place. Brilliantly done, not a line wasted!

Of course, the other thing when you re-read a book is that you’re usually more aware of context than you were the first time round. I knew from the start that I was not reading an autobiographical first novel by a young writer, but a mature work by an established playwright whose own background had little in common with her characters. Moreover, I knew she was writing it in exile in the US during the war, and that the Englishness was contrived at least as much to suit the tastes of American readers as for the “home” market. (Compare Wodehouse’s wonderfully nostalgic books written during and after the war and also set mostly in an idyllic thirties England.) That knowledge doesn't take away your enjoyment of the book, but it does help you see what the author is up to. ( )

Beautifully written. I was truly, completely "enchanted" by this narrator and story. I always take that word, in a synopsis, with a single grain of salt but this time it was really accurate and deserved. This was a reading experience that compared with Jane Austen and maybe three other books so far - maybe less.

All these characters were so perfectly described, with all their quirks, that I felt like I was there, invisible, living in the castle and seeing and hearing everything that was happening as I read over Cassandra's shoulder. ( )

A book you appreciate at so many different levels depending on what age you are. I love Cassandra. ( )

A book you appreciate at so many different levels depending on what age you are. I love Cassandra. ( )