Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1407 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Entertainment Weekly
Dreamy and funny...an odd, shimmering timelessness clings to its pages. A thousand and one cheers for its reissue. A +.

Los Angeles Times
It is an occasion worth celebrating when a sparkling novel, a work of wit, irony and feeling is brought back into print after an absence of many years. So uncork the champagne for I Capture the Castle

Daily Mail
`This is a wonderfully charming story of love, sibling rivalry and the eccentricities of bohemian life'

Customer Reviews

'Consciously Naive'
I was drawn to trying I Capture the Castle, as so many women cite this as being their favourite book. There are many points about the novel that I find absolutely charming: it's division into three phases of Cassandra's growth - each attributed to a different journal; Smith's descriptive skills and ability to capture the character's idiosyncrasies channeled through Cassandra's narrative voice; the empathy one feels with the character of Stephen, even as we view him through Cassandra's eyes.

On the other hand I found, until the very end of the novel, that the narrative voice (the character of Cassandra) was extremely irritating. Whilst I am prepared to accept that this was easier towards the end of the novel as she was growing up and less 'consciously naive', as she is described by Simon, and therefore this irritant is a deliberate narrative device... it still annoyed me and marred my enjoyment of the story Smith is telling her readers.

The claims of some to favour this novel over any others seems a little 'consciously naive' in itself to me - perhaps a little like my own claims for Breakfast at Tiffany's to be my favourite film of all time (although I adore it, in reality it's Bridget Jones' Diary that I'll return to again and again on a rainy day) and consequently it sits uneasily on my conscience and grates... just a little.

A Ruffled Mind K blogspot

I Capture the Castle is the next book on my favorite's list!
I am currently reading a book called I Capture the Castle, by
Dodie Smith, which is has a wonderfully-charasmatic narrator and a great story. It's written as a diary of a 17-year old girl named Cassandra who lives with her nutty family in a half-falling-apart castle.

Her 21-year-old sister, Rose, is gorgeous, but very gloomy because she says that there are no men to meet or
marry. Rose hates it that the family is poor, and says, "I'd marry the devil himself if he had money!"

Cassandra's father wrote a hit book called Jacob's Wrestling that sold a lot before they moved into the castle, but something awful happened that Cassandra's mother (she died about five years ago) said may have
just traumatized the writing out of him. Anyways, he hasn't written for at least ten years and all he does is sit in his room and read mystery stories and lay around doing nothing. No one really knows if he's writing or not, but it seems that he's given up trying to.

Cassandra's step-mother, who insists that her real name is Topaz, has jobs posing for artists, usually nude, and is rather famous for it. Rose sometimes hates her for whatever reason, but Topaz can be quite motherly, other than the fact that she doesn't care in the least bit about taking off her clothes, and sometimes, at night, stands on top of the mound near the castle, nude.

Cassandra's brother, Thomas, is fifteen and attends the nearby school. He seems to be very shy.

Stephen works (not exactly as a worker, because he has been accepted into their house like a member of the family) in the Mortmaine's house (their last name), and "is devoted to Cassandra", as her father puts it. Stephen occasionally copies down poems from a famous poet and gives it to her. I'm not sure if he thinks that Cassandra knows that he hasn't written the poems himself, but she does. Anyways, he's
very sweet, and goes out of his way to buy things for Cassandra without her even asking.

CASSANDRA is an aspiring writer who is using this book as a sort of a diary to tell us about her crazy family and the adventures that she has with them, and with the castle.

Everybody should read this book! Once you start, you can't put down the funny adventures that Rose and Cassandra have together, and great details of the castle. Read it!

Captivating
I love this book. Cassandra has such a strong voice that shines through every page, she feels just like a real person. I love her. I want to hug her, I want to be her and I want to be her friend. I was so sad to close the book for the last time I'd ever explore that book. The first time is always the best time but it's the kind of book you read and read and read again.

I can't explain it, I can't tell you what it's about apart from the journal of a girl on the point of womanhood. It sounds cliched, but it's not I promise you. It's a fantastic story with beautiful scenery and lovely characters and a wondeful sense of belonging.

If you read this, you'll find your home within these pages. Cassandra leaps out from the print and she grabs you and takes you with her. She becomes real - she will forever remain real to me.

She is the female heroine of all books. To me, she stands above all and I loved this book.

Loved. I'm so in love with this book I can't explain it coherently. It's the best single book in the world.