A wonderful story | I Capture the Castle

Nicely done | I Capture the Castle | Dodie Smith

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	• I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith St. Martin's Griffin, 1999 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 230 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I loved it!!

The setting of the book is wonderfull I was quickly absorbed in the story a MUST buy.

A wonderful story

I just loved I Capture The Castle. What a charming book!

Set in the 1930s in a rural English town, the novel tells the story of Cassandra Mortmain, a seventeen year old girl living with her family in a run-down castle. Cassandra's family is highly eccentric. Her father is a tortured writer, her stepmother a free spirit and great beauty and her sister Rose is her imaginative best friend and confidante. The story revolves around the love triangle that ensues when two wealthy American brothers move into a nearby estate and begin courting the Mortmain sisters.

Smith's writing style is languid and lushly romantic. The novel is a pleasure to read. While Rose and Cassandra's romances are very much mired in old fashioned conventions, the emotions involved are quite accessible to modern readers. Cassandra comes across as a vivid and believable character and it's easy to care for her.

I have to say that I was disappointed in the ending. Not because it didn't work, but because I'd been hoping for a different outcome. I actually thought about it for days. That's the power of a good story!

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Nicely done

This a very appealing book for teens. A young girl who find herself in a castle, with sister, brother, father and step mother. All of them have very different personalities. The oldest girl keeps a diary of everything, because she want to be a writer better than her father. All while looking for love, specially the love of a well to do man.

Anna del C.
Author of "The Elf and the Princess"
and "Trouble in the Elf City"
The Elf and The Princess: The Silent Warrior Trilogy - Book One (The Silent Warrior Trilogy)

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My all time favorite book

I first read this book when I was 17 (the same age as the main character). My mother gave me this book when I had nothing to read and I fell in love with it from the first sentence.
It is beautifully written and highly relateable to any young woman and possibly to those who remember what it was like to be at that age. While it follows Cassandra and her family we see their lives turn upside down and back right again as they struggle to make ends meet, find love, and discover the meaning of their own lives.
Though good, the movie doesn't do this book justice.
I highly recommend this as a gift to a young woman around the age of Cassandra (16). Once read this book has remained a favorite of mine and I read it at least once a year.

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One of my ALL TIME FAVORITE Novels!!!

This is a literary gem that should, at the very least, be read by everyone who has a love for historical novels. It is a fantastic/appropriate read for both teens and adults, and I recommend it so much that I have had to buy several copies over the years - unsure of who has my last one when I find myself recommending it to yet another friend.

I'm ordering two more copies today.

The main character, Cassandra, is my favorite narrator of all time. She is witty, yet not overdone, and tells the story with an honest teen perspective. She is humiliated when a normal 17-year-old would feel so, and finds herself in completely realistic situations, rather than overly dramatic versions of reality. And yet there is SO much to laugh at, and feel agony over. The balance of wit and angst is perfect in my opinion.

The ending is as surprising as any in literature, and still so real. It is not at all a novel where the story is wrapped up with a neat red bow, but rather one which makes you smile and say, "Ah, Cassandra, you are going to go places, my dear friend." That is exactly how I feel about Cassandra - she is a dear friend who I wish could have told me story after story as her life progressed!

This was a book that could have had many exciting sequels, but apparently wasn't as appreciated in its day as it should have been.

Hooray for Dodie Smith - I wish she would have written 101 more novels :)

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I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"-- and the heart of the reader-- in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.

Bonus: Reading Group Discussion Guide included in this edition

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