“So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
The long summer can be a perfect time to get back into reading after the hectic months of the working/school year. I personally have just finished my GCSE's and my main aim for the holidays is to sharpen my reading skills (I'm too cool I know).
For me, summer tends to entail a desire for a certain type of book. The type of book you can imagine reading reclined in a hammock in a field full of tall grass and perhaps a gently flowing river to lull you into a new world. A book with a slightly magical touch. A book that will make you fall in love.
Amazingly, I have found a book that easily does all these things and more: I capture the castle by Dodie Smith. Set in the 1930's in a crumbling castle, this book contains some of the most wonderful characters you will ever meet. It's narrator is teenager Cassandra Mortmain who is at once hilarious, incredibly touching and just a tad 'consciously naive'. At the start anyway.
Cassandra lives in the castle with her dysfunctional (to say the least) family, which includes an eccentric nudist stepmother, reclusive father and restless sister who 'wants to live in a Jane Austen novel'-a sentiment I'm sure many of us can relate to!
The book follows the characters' personal struggles to escape their poverty and the sometimes funny sometimes unbearably sad lengths they go to to do this.
Written by an author living in California but pining for the fields and countryside of England and set in a time between a country being ripped apart by war, the tone is perfectly longing and nostalgic, anticipating a change but not quite accepting it.This beautifully reflects the in-between period of being on the cusp of adulthood but still wanting to cling onto the last dregs of being a child.
With a splash of romance (both unrequited and otherwise) adventure and growing up, I capture the castle so poignantly 'captures' being human that it almost seems to have a pulse.
I don't want to give too explicit of a review of this book because I think everyone should have the pleasure of being seduced by it's charm in the purest way possible.
Seriously, read it.
I hope this has been helpful in some way! If you have any recommendations for summer books yourself then please leave them in the comments.
-Philippa
