I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $4.15

  This wonderful novel tells the story of seventeen-year-old, Cassandra and her extraordinary family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Cassandra's eccentric father is a writer whose first book took the literary world by storm but he has since failed to write a single word and now spends most of his time reading detective novels from the village library. Cassandra's elder sister, Rose - exquisitely beautiful, vain and bored - despairs of her family's circumstances and determines to marry their affluent American landlord, Simon regardless of the fact she does not love him. She is, in turns, helped and hindered in this by their bohemian step-mother Topaz, an artist's model and nudist who likes to commune with nature. Finally, there is Stephen, dazzlingly handsome and hopelessly in love with Cassandra. Amidst this maelstrom, Cassandra strives to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries, which 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 heart of the reader in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.22

  I write this sitting at the kitchen sink' is the first line of a novel about love, sibling rivalry and a bohemian existence in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Cassandra Mortmin's journal records her fadingly glamorous stepmother, her beautiful, wistful older sister and the man to whom they owe both their isolation and poverty - Father. The author of one experimental novel, and a minor cause celebre, he has since suffered from writer's block and is determined to drag his family down with him. But if the iron has entered Father's soul it hasn't penetrated Cassandra's ...

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $10.90

  I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up. Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fadingly glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time.