‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink’ is the first line of I Capture the Castle, a timeless, witty and enchanting novel by Dodie Smith about growing up.
Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian, impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. In her journal, she records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her glamorous stepmother Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from writer’s block. However, their lives are thrown into confusion when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time.
The Making of a Writer
Something half-remembered involving a writer locked in a tower, and a conviction that my first encounter – literary or otherwise – with the drink crème de menthe took place within its pages:...
Read more‘The quarterly itself is a joy and always sends me scurrying to my bookshelves . . . ’
‘The quarterly itself is a joy and always sends me scurrying to my bookshelves to see if I just might have a copy of a long-forgotten book. . . ’
Read moreComments & Reviews
Leave your review
