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A review by theyellowbrickreader
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
5.0
This was my mom’s self proclaimed favorite book. She gave me the copy I own probably a year and a half before she died and I only got around to reading it now- almost a year and a half after she died. This personal connection will for sure be a bias in my review, but I am going to honor that and review through this lens. When I picked this book up to read I wanted to feel a connection to my mom in the pages. I wanted it to click, I wanted to fully understand exactly everything she loved that made it her favorite, and I wanted it to be my favorite for all those same reasons.
As a fan of YA genre, I’m fully intrigued by this being sometimes categorized as the first YA novel (pub. 1948), and furthermore penned by the author who also wrote 101 Dalmatians. Not that I’ve read that or even considered it as a book, just that it’s a universally known story as is a Disney movie’s destiny. I Capture the Castle is pretty much considered a classic, and it runs in the circle of Anne Bogel recommendations, so beyond my mom are a few other compelling facts about this novel!
I took my time with this novel. I am at a reading pace lately where, depending on content, I’m finishing 350 page novels in a few days, and yet I spent the whole month of May with I Capture the Castle and its 343 pages. This may be in part to a slightly older style writing, and long chapters, but for its lean towards classic style, it was also incredibly readable and consumable. I was savoring, not slogging.
Even with this book pulled to a normal reading distance away from my face, mine is an old enough copy that I could smell the pages while I read. It has deckled edges and the top page edges sprayed. In new books either of these things I find annoying or unnecessary but in this book I treasured these aspects and allowed them to add to the charm of my reading experience.
I loved the character of Cassandra and how her journaling was the vehicle that allowed this story to unfold. Often times she wrote to her journal about her own journaling, speaking to herself in a way that was speaking to the reader through the fourth wall. It was so familiar to ways I would have written in my journal at that age, and in that way the book seemed contemporary despite it being nearly 75 years old.
The story was immersive and while I was reading I really did feel transported to England and the castle grounds.
This is a lovely coming of age story.
When I read the final page and closed the back cover, I took one more deep breath to inhale the old book smell. I don’t know all, or even any, of the reasons my mom called this her favorite book. Reading it did not give me some transcendent knowledge, but it did make me feel closer to her. I could give this nothing less than five stars.
There were many pages where I captured quotes I loved. I will come back and share them here soon.
As a fan of YA genre, I’m fully intrigued by this being sometimes categorized as the first YA novel (pub. 1948), and furthermore penned by the author who also wrote 101 Dalmatians. Not that I’ve read that or even considered it as a book, just that it’s a universally known story as is a Disney movie’s destiny. I Capture the Castle is pretty much considered a classic, and it runs in the circle of Anne Bogel recommendations, so beyond my mom are a few other compelling facts about this novel!
I took my time with this novel. I am at a reading pace lately where, depending on content, I’m finishing 350 page novels in a few days, and yet I spent the whole month of May with I Capture the Castle and its 343 pages. This may be in part to a slightly older style writing, and long chapters, but for its lean towards classic style, it was also incredibly readable and consumable. I was savoring, not slogging.
Even with this book pulled to a normal reading distance away from my face, mine is an old enough copy that I could smell the pages while I read. It has deckled edges and the top page edges sprayed. In new books either of these things I find annoying or unnecessary but in this book I treasured these aspects and allowed them to add to the charm of my reading experience.
I loved the character of Cassandra and how her journaling was the vehicle that allowed this story to unfold. Often times she wrote to her journal about her own journaling, speaking to herself in a way that was speaking to the reader through the fourth wall. It was so familiar to ways I would have written in my journal at that age, and in that way the book seemed contemporary despite it being nearly 75 years old.
The story was immersive and while I was reading I really did feel transported to England and the castle grounds.
This is a lovely coming of age story.
When I read the final page and closed the back cover, I took one more deep breath to inhale the old book smell. I don’t know all, or even any, of the reasons my mom called this her favorite book. Reading it did not give me some transcendent knowledge, but it did make me feel closer to her. I could give this nothing less than five stars.
There were many pages where I captured quotes I loved. I will come back and share them here soon.