I Capture the Castle

A quick, delightful little read with a bit of an ambiguous ending, which I weirdly didn't mind.

Though I am wondering if I got ahold of an abridged version of the audiobook by mistake, since my copy was a little under five hours long, and other options were over 12 hours....

Oh my goodness. SO drab. SO boring. SO mind-numbing. I just couldn't do this one. I picked it up because it's supposed to be this incredible work that everyone MUST read but...I simply couldn't finish. After nodding off while reading several times, I finally shelved this one so that I could move on to something that I would actually enjoy.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

4 or 4.5 stars.

Delightfully charming and cozy,

I Capture the Castle is a coming-of-age story that’s lighthearted and precocious; it feels like it easily fits in with the likes of

Anne of Green Gables and

Little Women (though it’s been many, many years since I’ve read either). Some readers will probably find it overly twee, but for me that’s the main appeal.

Cassandra is a regular Rory Gilmore: bright, spirited, eccentric, and in love with the written word, living in poverty but determined to make the best of it. (Though unlike the Cuthberts, Marches, and Gilmores, the Mortmains are horrifyingly irresponsible, their family on the verge of starvation but neither of the parents—for that matter, nor Rose and Cassandra, who are no longer in school but seem to spend their time lying about the castle—much interested in finding reliable work. It’s unclear whether Smith intends this lifestyle to be attractive in a bohemian and romantic-starving-artist sort of way, or whether we’re supposed to understand that the adults’ behavior is actually quite shameful. It seems to be the former, but the story is told through Cassandra’s eyes so I’ll dubiously give Smith the benefit of the doubt.) Her voice is wonderfully well-developed, and she feels like a real person, flaws and all. For that matter, all of the characters are not only fully fleshed-out and multi-layered, but also perfectly fit into the offbeat world the Mortmains inhabit.

The story absolutely flies by. Smith’s prose is pretty and easy to read, and the Mortmain girls’ trials are consistently compelling (often funny, occasionally sad). The novel really does succeed in “capturing the castle” and establishing a strong sense of place—though I was expecting something quite gothic and dramatic, and instead was given a much more whimsical and bohemian tone. I was also delighted to find that instead of being predictable as I thought it might be, the twists and turns were consistently surprising, particularly the ending!

The only reason this wasn’t a five-star read for me is that I didn’t quite connect with it emotionally—which probably has more to do with me than it does the novel. Perhaps it’s because I’m so much older than Cassandra (though I loved Shirley Jackon’s

Hangsaman, another coming-of-age novel featuring a seventeen-year-old protagonist); perhaps Cassandra is simply too different from me; perhaps it all felt a bit too bohemian; perhaps it was just too lighthearted and optimistic to ring true. Whatever the reason, I don’t place any blame on Smith, and would still highly recommend this to anyone interested.

Some favorite passages:

I feel rather like a Brontë myself, writing by the light of a guttering candle with my fingers so numb I can hardly hold the pencil.

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.

How strange and beautiful it looked in the late afternoon light! I can still recapture that first glimpse – see the sheer grey stone walls and towers against the pale yellow sky, the reflected castle stretching towards us on the brimming moat, the floating patches of emerald-green water-weed.

I would have taken a bet that she had nothing whatever on under her oilskins and that she intended to stride up the mound and then fling them off. After being an artists’ model for so many years, she has no particular interest in Nudism for its own sake, but she has a passion for getting into closest contact with the elements.

But it has come to me, sitting here in the barn feeling very full of cold rice, that there is something revolting about the way girls’ minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.

miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other. Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.

but then it struck me how little I know of him, or of Topaz or Rose or anyone in the world, really, except myself. I used to flatter myself that I could get flashes of what people were thinking but if I did, it was only of quick, surface thoughts.

The table was a pool of candlelight – so bright that the rest of the room seemed almost black, with the faces of the family portraits floating in the darkness.

Perhaps he finds beauty saddening – I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked Father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty’s evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die.

I tried to get her to talk some more – I was ready to enjoy a little exciting anticipation – but she wasn’t forthcoming. And I quite understood; when things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn’t safe.

So she and I wandered around on our own and drifted into the biggest greenhouse. It was lovely moving through the hot, moist, heavily scented air and it felt particularly private – almost as if we were in a separate world from the others.

A pink camellia fell with a little dead thud.

I felt that what with the moonlight, the music, the scent of the stocks and having swum round a six-hundred-year-old moat, romance was getting a really splendid leg-up and it seemed an awful waste that we weren’t in love with each other

Oddly, I have never thought of us as poor people – I mean, I have never been terribly sorry for us, as for the unemployed, or beggars; though really we have been rather worse off, being unemployable and with no one to beg from.

two Brontë–Jane Austen girls, poor but spirited, two Girls of Godsend Castle.

What a difference there is between wearing even the skimpiest bathing-suit and wearing nothing! After a few minutes I seemed to live in every inch of my body as fully as I usually do in my head and my hands and my heart.

Walking down Belmotte was the oddest sensation – every step took us deeper into the mist until at last it closed over our heads. It was like being drowned in the ghost of water.

‘Oh, it wouldn’t be fair to rush to church because one was miserable,’ I said – taking care to look particularly cheerful.

‘It’d be most unfair not to – you’d be doing religion out of its very best chance.’

‘I’ve got to be needed, Cassandra – I always have been. Men have either painted me, or been in love with me, or just plain ill-treated me – some men have to do a lot of ill-treating, you know, it’s good for their work; but one way or another, I’ve always been needed. I’ve got to inspire people, Cassandra – it’s my job in life.’

‘Because if I don’t get going soon, the whole impetus may die – and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

A little cloud of white moths came all the way with me, hovering round the lantern.

A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?

There was mist on Midsummer Eve, mist when we drove into the dawn.

He said he would come back.

Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.