I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

This is an old young adults book by the woman who later wrote 101 Dalmations. I remember reading it as youngster but re-reading it as a (very) mature woman brings a bitter sweetness to this coming of age story that was almost unexpected. I say almost because I picked it up again following a review or some mention of it in my wider reading as somebody or other’s favourite. Vague, I know, but enough to pique my interest. There are times when I want sweet and old fashioned, something dating from before that cynical hard edged chick-lit sort of novel, full of pseudo feminists, was invented. It is beautifully written. It is poetic. It is charming. And the characters are marvellous, especially Cassandra who is a semi-autobiographical creation. It’s the kind of can’t put down book you read under the covers by torchlight as a kid. And you really don’t know what’s going to happen. Cassandra lives with her ridiculously eccentric father and step mother and her beautiful sister Rose, who unaccountably reminded me of Ophelia for no other reason than for her looks, in a derelict castle that they’ve rented for forty years. The father is a genius one-book wonder of a writer, who has plunged the family into penury through his inactivity. Along comes a rather brash American family who have inherited the local ‘hall’, a Mrs Cotton and her two eligible sons Neil and Simon. They interfere completely in the lives of the English family. You know from the outset it’s going to be a romance and of course you’re not disappointed. However it’s not the sort of romance story a teenager would expect and raises all sorts of ethical questions about people’s relationships that are quite unexpected. It’s a lovely old fashioned but eminently readable book and much, much better than a lot of the trashy fraught stuff that has superseded it.