I Capture the Castle -- Dodie Smith (cont'd)
I am no longer a Bad Person.
I finished I Capture the Castle. And I continued to love it, all the way through. Not only will fans of the Anne books like it, but also fans of Austen. There are quite a few mentions of our Miss Austen (particularly Pride and Prejudice) in Cassandra's journal—not surprising, considering everything that happens. Plotwise, I think that Dodie Smith might have been (up to a point) channeling Jane Austen. How lovely. Sigh. They really don't write 'em like this anymore. [ETA, years later: Clearly I wrote this before discovering Michelle Cooper's FitzOsborne books.]
Cassandra is seventeen years old, and determined to be a writer. She is keeping a journal, partly to practice speed-writing, and partly to teach herself how to write a novel. She lives with her father, who wrote a critically acclaimed book called Jacob Wrestling, but who hasn't written a line since. Everyone blames his inability to write on his brief stint in jail:
We were living in a small house by the sea at the time. Father had just joined us after his second American lecture tour. One afternoon when we were having tea in the garden, he had the misfortune to lose his temper with mother very noisily just as he was about to cut a piece of cake. He brandished the cake-knife at her so menacingly that an officious neighbor jumped the garden fence to intervene and got himself knocked down. Father explained in court that killing a woman with our silver cake-knife would be a long, weary business entailing sawing her to death, and he was completely exonerated of any intention of slaying mother. The whole case seems to have been quite ludicrous, with everyone but the neighbour being very funny. But father made the mistake of being funnier than the judge and, as there was no doubt whatever that he had seriously damaged the neighbour, he was sent to prison for three months.
Cassandra also lives with her older sister, Rose, who is very beautiful, but who is very unhappy with their living situation.
I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic—two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud.
The household is rounded out by Topaz, the stepmother (who is wonderful), and Stephen, the boy who does work around the place for room & board. Stephen, incidentally, is amazingly handsome, devastatingly poor, and madly in love with Cassandra.
As if things aren't entertaining (or confusing—for the characters, I mean, not the reader) enough, the owner of the castle (they are just renting it) dies. And the man who inherits it is young, rich, brilliantly witty, very handsome and every other good thing. To make things even more interesting, he has a younger, not-rich, brilliantly witty, sarcastic (and yes, handsome) brother.
I am so glad that I own this book. I'm going to read it over and over again until it falls apart. And then I'm going to buy another copy.
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