Lashings of ginger beer
Mar. 9th, 2021 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
About this time last year I went looking for I, Claudius on our bookshelves and came away with half a dozen of R's books that looked interesting enough to try out, of which this was one, mainly on the basis of the blurb on the back cover. Reading the introduction, I found out that Smith was the British author of The 101 Dalmatians, and that this book was written in the late 1940s during a period in the USA, that it shares some themes with Pride and Prejudice, and it has always been very popular.
I found the book a bit mixed. It's true that "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink" is quite an opening, and 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain has quite an entertaining turn of phrase. It is the 1930s, and her father, once a successful author, hasn't written anything for years; the family have a lease of a "castle" - or at least, the building formed from the ruins of one; they are the archetype of an impecunious family, living in rags, eating scraps, barely able to heat their home. The castle's landlord dies and two already wealthy American brothers inherit the estate, peaking the interest of Cassandra and her older sister for financial as well as romantic reasons. So yes, in some ways, it can be seen as a recasting of Pride and Prejudice somewhat more than a century on; but it's also different. The narration through the first person of Cassandra carries all the emotional rollercoaster of an adolescent, which is sometimes fun and sometimes painful; I suppose we've all been there. For me, it required a bit too much suspension of belief at points, and some of the characters seemed over-caricatured, but it was a lighter read.
About this time last year I went looking for I, Claudius on our bookshelves and came away with half a dozen of R's books that looked interesting enough to try out, of which this was one, mainly on the basis of the blurb on the back cover. Reading the introduction, I found out that Smith was the British author of The 101 Dalmatians, and that this book was written in the late 1940s during a period in the USA, that it shares some themes with Pride and Prejudice, and it has always been very popular.
I found the book a bit mixed. It's true that "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink" is quite an opening, and 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain has quite an entertaining turn of phrase. It is the 1930s, and her father, once a successful author, hasn't written anything for years; the family have a lease of a "castle" - or at least, the building formed from the ruins of one; they are the archetype of an impecunious family, living in rags, eating scraps, barely able to heat their home. The castle's landlord dies and two already wealthy American brothers inherit the estate, peaking the interest of Cassandra and her older sister for financial as well as romantic reasons. So yes, in some ways, it can be seen as a recasting of Pride and Prejudice somewhat more than a century on; but it's also different. The narration through the first person of Cassandra carries all the emotional rollercoaster of an adolescent, which is sometimes fun and sometimes painful; I suppose we've all been there. For me, it required a bit too much suspension of belief at points, and some of the characters seemed over-caricatured, but it was a lighter read.