![]() Set in the early twentieth-century English county side, I Capture the Castle, is the first-person journal of Cassandra Mortmain in year of her eighteenth birthday. Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle provides all this and more, as her heroine struggles to find herself and wade through first love, all the while setting it down in writing. Then, imagine two eligible young men-brothers-exploding the quiet repetition of your family’s days as the elder inherits the local manor house. Imagine facing young womanhood after many years of isolation living in a castle with little more than this cast of quirky characters to inform your world view. Imagine coming-of-age with a bohemian stepmother, a reclusive writer father, a wildly handsome servant turned friend, a sister who longs for wealth and the comforts it provides like Austen or Brontë heroines of old, and a younger brother who is both young and somehow wise beyond his years. From its opening line-“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink”-Smith’s heroine and novel kept me entertained and engaged. When, in October, I scanned my to-be-read stacks for comfort reads, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle (1948) caught my eye. ![]() ![]() I have always loved a good coming-of-age novel. ![]()
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