I Capture the Castle

I am fortunate to have a good amount of free time, between dog sitting – the new dog has gained 4 pound in 8 days, I guess he is hungry a lot – and summer days.  It tends to be a slower time of the year for us, though things pick up around first week of August.  Hope to get my reading in for the next 4 weeks, as not sure I will get too much in August.  My RA meetings will pick up considerably, so the list will be sure to grow through the beginning of October.  I tend to learn a great deal during the 1-1 meetings with RAs.  So I was able to jump in and read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, completely removed from her later novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians, which turned into a movie by Disney. Click through to read more thoughts...

 

The book is written in the voice of the main character, Cassandra Mortmain.  Cassandra and her family live with their father and step-mother in a castle the father rented in the hopes to inspire him to write after completing his first novel.  The dad’s struggle really is a secondary plot to the story of Cassandra and her sister, Rose, who have feelings towards two visiting American’s who inherit the castle.  I’ve noticed I’m unconsciously selecting books recently from the voice of young women.  Yes, I know this is somewhat hard for me to relate to as I was never a young woman.  Cassandra never allows herself to follow her feelings as they may negatively impact her sister, who ends up eloping with the other brother and leaving Cassandra and the family behind.  I actually think the Stephen character is pretty interesting (the live-in boy who is the son of the former cook for the Mortmains).  He becomes an actor and model for the affluent mom of the two American boys.  Does Cassandra go for him?  Also having just left Austin (alright I’ll stop talking about that soon), which just celebrated “Weird Austin Week”… check-it out on the web here – weird stuff (t-shirts, billboards, and a parade/activities… just to show people you are weird)… the character of Cassandra’s mom , the free “ahead of her time 1960s” “let’s wear our boots and strip and stand in nature,” felt weird to me and seemed to be a mismatch for this 1949 novel.  Maybe the author was actually setting the trend and thinking “we should have a stunning woman standing nude on a hilltop wearing combat boots.”  Dodie, the author, would have been 73 at the height of the hippie generation.  Wonder what she would have looked like then?  Actually thinking about all of this was a bit more interesting then the book… sorry… not a top ten.