Romola Garai (Cassandra Mortmain) and Henry Thomas (Simon Cotton) in I Capture the Castle. Photograph: Allstar/BBC It was like the difference between the beautiful old Godsend graves and the new ones open to receive coffins... that time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty." a b c d Gritten, David (11 July 2003). "The coming of age of a much-loved story". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 2 October 2021. The story is so charming! I especially like how the main character, Cassandra, appreciated food because of her poverty. Favorites:

Cassandra keeps a diary, and at first it is mostly meandering observations on how poor they are and how hard everything is. Then Stephen finds a job as a model and the American owners of the castle show up.Cassandra has many wonderful insights on life, on topics ranging from writing to faith to matters of the heart. I personally have had some of the same thoughts as Cassandra, except Ms. Smith was able to put them into words. This 1948 novel is about an intelligent 17 year old girl, Cassandra Mortmain, who lives in semi-genteel but crushing poverty in mid-1930s England, in a dilapidated castle. Cassandra has ambitions of becoming an author like her father. Her story is told in the form of her journal entries, as she practices her writing skills to try to learn to “capture” the castle, as well as the people in her life, in her writing. The summary is accurate and pointless. It is about Cassandra writing about herself in a journal. Their family is penniless. They do live in a castle. She is, as it promises, deeply, hopelessly in love. Even when she is encountering the difficulties of first love and first heartbreak, Cassandra remains a wonderfully likable heroine, with a strong narrative voice and a distinctive sense of humour. Whimsical, charming and beautifully written, this engaging classic novel will appeal equally to both adult and young adult readers.

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. Everyone goes ON and ON about this protagonist, Cassandra. “She is the most charming creature in the history of the world,” says JK Rowling. “She is a hero,” says a heroic person. “She is me reincarnated,” says God. The charm of the story wasn't all about food. I think it was also because of the innocence of the narrator and the society described. Innocence in that it was possible to be at once delicate and matter-of-fact about adultery, jealousy, a cougar, kissing without love, confusion about love, a dress pulled down off a shoulder, but all without the salaciousness w/official veneer of prudery that is our reality now. It has the most delicately worded description of sex I'd ever read: I am not so sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them, and one obviously has to try them sooner or later. Not to say innocence made things better but I wonder what it would be like to live without an implied wink or leer in certain statements. I'm misrepresenting some of these things since the book is presented as the journal entries of Cassandra. Cassandra and Rose think of themselves as two sisters from a 19th-century marriage plot book, “two Brontë-Jane Austen girls,” Cassandra writes, “poor but spirited, two girls of Godsend castle.” So as the book opens in March, and they learn that their new landlords are two rich and handsome young American brothers, they know exactly what that means for the kind of story they’re living in: It’s the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, and Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy have just come to town. As long as Rose, the family beauty, can arrange to fall in love with the richer one, their happy ending is assured.They have strong opinions about whether Cassandra and Simon Cotton ought to be together (they should not, Simon does not deserve Cassandra) and whether the 2003 movie adaptation was any good (it was not, young Henry Cavill was inspired casting for Stephen but everything else was nonsense). They have read I Capture the Castle and fallen under its immensely charming and slightly melancholy spell, and they know that everyone else who loves that book must be a kindred spirit. 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.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 successful writer captured the imagination of the public and she was featured in papers all over the country. At one point in the novel, unaware that she is listening in, Simon wonders whether Cassandra is being “consciously naive” i.e. putting it on as a show to attract people. She is incensed, and rightly so; because if there is one thing to be said for the girl, it is her perfect honesty about everything including herself! For example, you have respect a person who can say that a piece by Bach made her feel that she was being repeatedly hit on the head by a teaspoon! I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel—I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations. It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me. too much lovey-dovey stuff, not enough practical instruction on the day-to-day of castle acquisition.

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.” I mean, it’s all very upper class white people problems. Oh no, we can’t afford our castle. Oh no, Rose is behaving in a socially awkward manner to an American. Oh no, we’re all in love with the wrong person.On the word God: "It's merely shorthand for where we come from, where we're going, and what it's all about." The characters are rather exuberant in how they are portrayed by Dodie Smith, Topaz for instance is tall and pale as a slightly dead goddess. In I Capture the Castle we follow Cassandra Mortmain, resident of a falling apart British castle, which she inhabits with a brother (Thomas), a sister (Rose), a rather ethereal stepmother (Topaz), her writerly father and a handsome servant and orphan Stephen. On 5 November 2019, the BBC News listed I Capture the Castle on its list of the 100 most influential novels. [8]