Almost 70 years ago, British author and playwright Dodie Smith who may be best known for her beloved children’s novel, The One Hundred and One Dalmatians, published her very first novel, I Capture the Castle. Since then, it has become a literary classic and adapted for the stage, radio, and the big screen.
I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, an aspiring writer, and her family—father, James, a once-famous author, who has long-been suffering from severe writer’s block, her classically beautiful sister Rose, her younger brother Thomas, and her bohemian stepmother Topaz—who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle.
Wanting to hone her writing skills, Cassandra resolves to capture the details and situations of the world around her.
Chronicling the family’s struggles and triumphs over a turbulent six-month period, she fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet candidly insightful diary entries about the changes taking place within the castle walls.
Cassandra is a witty, pensive, observant heroine, and just the right voice for narrating this classic coming-of-age tale. By the time she pens her final entry, she has “captured the castle”—and the heart of the reader—in one of literature’s most enchanting entertainments.
Check out I Capture the Castle and other classic works of literature like it at the Sioux City Public Library.
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Support for Check It Out comes from Avery Brothers.
