I wonder if she used that material as she crafted Cassandra’s character?

Dodie kept a diary herself aged seventeen. But she added more to Cassandra’s character, who comes across as pragmatic, sanguine and endearingly innocent. Dodie was 52 when she wrote the book she has captured all that passion very well. She is seventeen I can think of many seventeen-year-old girls who think like this. She explains to us how important her feelings are to her and how most of her focus is on her feelings. (I always planned to have that name as my nom de plume when I was a starry-eyed, aspiring writer.) She describes her family and their situation with serious humour – which made me laugh out loud on several occasions – with plain-speaking honesty and broadly without judgement. The castle and setting are very beautiful but Mortmain has not written a word and the building is now practically empty and is crumbling around them.Ĭassandra wants to be a writer. They had rented the castle on a long-term lease as a place of refuge where Mortmain would surely find inspiration and once again put pen to paper. Topaz was an artist’s model but left London to marry James and live with him and the children in the romantic but decaying castle they had discovered when his first wife was still living. James Mortmain wrote a famous and iconic book many years ago which made his name, but he has written nothing since. It’s the women who feature most in the book, as seen through Cassandra’s eyes – and the driving plot is how they are going to survive with no income and all valuable possessions already sold.

There are five members of the family: Cassandra her younger brother, Thomas elder sister, Rose stepmother, Topaz and father, James – always referred to as Mortmain by his adoring, bohemian second wife. It describes her eccentric and chaotic family who have fallen on stricken times and are practically destitute. The novel is written as the journal of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain.

Does this make it a classic? The Big Read is where I first came across it: my interest piqued because I so loved Dodie Smith’s children’s books (which came later). In 2003 it featured at number 82 in the BBC’s survey: “The Big Read”, which listed the top 100 best-loved novels as voted for by the British public. Since its publication in 1949, I Capture the Castle has never been out of print. (Reviewed as part of the Classics Club Challenge)

I capture the castle rose