Cassandra does grow up during the year-long course of the novel, and the end, while somewhat overwrought with soap opera machinations, gives me hope she and her family will get through this and start taking care of each other again, but I've got a lingering uneasiness about the family dynamics. Her father shoves her against a wall and doesn't even apologize, and neither he nor Cassandra seem aware he's done anything wrong. This is not a sweet little pastoral look at the English countryside like I expected -- the "we're poor, but it's fun!" approach -- instead, it hides a sort of secret viciousness beneath the jovial front.

Anyway, Topaz did the comforting far better than I could have done, as I am never disposed to clasp people to my bosom. She was most maternal, letting Rose weep all over the orange velvet tea-gown, which has suffered many things in its time. Rose will be furious with herself later on, because she has an unkind tendency to despise Topaz; but for the moment they are most amicable. Rose is now putting away her ironing, gulping a little, and Topaz is laying the table for tea while outlining impracticable plans for making money—such as giving a lute concert in the village or buying a pig in installments. An absorbing book, nostalgic in nature, with beautifully written passages and as much relevance now as it had at the time of its publication, I Capture The Castle is a touching, colourful and amusing book. And to anyone who receives it on World Book Night: go forth and devour. About I Capture the Castle The arrival of wealthy American family, the Cottons, who move into nearby Scoatney Hall, thus becoming landlords to Cassandra and her family, brings about much excitement for the Mortmain’s. And so we witness a young girl’s coming of age as she falls in love for the first time and encounters various rites of passage with both sharp wit and a level head. I finish this entry sitting on the stairs. I think it worthy of note that I never felt happier in my life—despite sorrow for father, pity for Rose, embarrassment about Stephen’s poetry and no justification for hope as regards our family’s general outlook. Perhaps it is because I have satisfied my creative urge; or it may be due to the thought of eggs for tea.Originally published in 1949, this delightful novel by the author of the much-loved One Hundred and One Dalmatians, still retains its freshness today.

I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea. I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel—I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations. It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me.

Over the course of the novel, Cassandra comes to seem less a child “with a little green hand” and more a young woman. How is I Capture the Castle a story of Cassandra’s coming of age?

NO THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A "YOUNG ADULT" BOOK! IT IS A BOOK ABOUT YOUNG ADULTS. SOMETIMES THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. Oh, dear, there has just been a slight scene! Rose asked Topaz to go to London and earn some money. Topaz replied that she didn’t think it was worth while, because it costs so much to live there. It is true that she can never save more than will buy us a few presents—she is very generous. The story is so charming! I especially like how the main character, Cassandra, appreciated food because of her poverty. Favorites: Cassandra's narrative voice is wonderful. She is serious at times, but also very witty, which makes for an engaging read. It feels absolutely real, as though I'm reading someone's actual journal. Sometimes I forget that I am reading a story and not a real-life account. Her emotions and the dialogue are so genuine, and they are spot-on for a seventeen-year-old girl in her situation. Now she is sitting on the steel trivet, raking the fire. The pink light makes her look more ordinary, but very pretty. She is twenty-nine and had two husbands before father (she will never tell us very much about them), but she still looks extraordinarily young. Perhaps that is because her expression is so blank.

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A voracious reader, Cassandra compares her situation to that of the Bennets in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. How would you compare the situation of the Mortmain sisters to that of the Bennet sisters? Then, just a short paragraph later, once she has given herself a stern talking to: “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.

I Capture the Castle was a disappointment. The blurb had lead me to believe that I was going to experience the pleasures of living in a beautiful castle, steeped in history, with a charming story weaving in perfectly with that castle, lead by our narrator, Cassandra. Unfortunately, that isn't what I experienced. There was a lot I didn't enjoy about this book, but I'll start with the positive. I shall have to get off the draining-board—Topaz wants the tea-cosy and our dog, Heloïse, has come in and discovered I have borrowed her blanket. She is a bull-terrier, snowy white except where her fondant-pink skin shows through her short hair. All right, Heloïse darling, you shall have your blanket. She gazes at me with love, reproach, confidence and humour—how can she express so much just with two rather small slanting eyes? Cassandra keeps a diary, and at first it is mostly meandering observations on how poor they are and how hard everything is. Then Stephen finds a job as a model and the American owners of the castle show up.When he came out he was as nice a man as ever—nicer, because his temper was so much better. Apart from that, he didn’t seem to me to be changed at all. But Rose remembers that he had already begun to get unsociable—it was then that he took a forty years’ lease of the castle, which is an admirable place to be unsociable in. Once we were settled here he was supposed to begin a new book. But time went on without anything happening and at last we realized that he had given up even trying to write—for years now, he has refused to discuss the possibility. Most of his life is spent in the gatehouse room, which is icy cold in winter as there is no fireplace; he just huddles over an oil-stove. As far as we know, he does nothing but read detective novels from the village library. Miss Marcy, the librarian and schoolmistress, brings them to him. She admires him greatly and says “the iron has entered into his soul.” Summers, Sue (6 April 2003). "Her castle was her home". The Guardian. ISSN 0029-7712 . Retrieved 17 February 2023.