If you’ve not met Cassandra Mortmain, you truly must. The heroine and narrator of Dodie Smith’s 1948 novel I Capture the Castle combines dry wit, deep thought, keen observations, and quirky interests in one fascinating character. She has both a matter-of-fact nature and a dreamy tone to her narration, painting for readers a colorful picture of her life. It’s a rather hard life, to be honest, when we first meet her, as she and her family are living in “not-so-genteel poverty.”
Cassandra, her father, stepmother, sister, brother, and a family friend reside in a ruined castle in the English countryside. Perched on the kitchen sink on a rainy night, Cassandra opens the novel by sketching out the character lines of the castle’s inhabitants, but as the story unfolds, we and Cassandra both discover so much more about each person. It’s a delightfully quirky cast. Mr. Mortmain is a one-hit wonder, having written a best-selling book and then refused to pick up a pen after its success. His second wife (his first having died of “perfectly natural causes”), Topaz, an artist’s model, is devoted to Mr. Mortmain, and sometimes “communes with nature” in the nude.
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