Book Review- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I Capture the Castle is an old novel by a somewhat well-known British Author, Dorothy (Dodie) Smith. Most people know of her most famous book, 101 Dalmations, which was the basis of the Disney film.


I Capture the Castle features Cassandra Mortmain as the young narrator/journalist whose experiment in learning to speed-write leads her to begin a diary describing her family life. Set in 1930's England, Cassandra writes of the physical and emotional poverty and richnesses of her family, which is living in a ruined castle that has been rebuilt into a farmhouse. The book has shades of Jane Austen, as the whole family (outside of the dottering father) takes on the role of attempting to marry off the oldest daughter, Rose, to their rich American neighbor and landlord.


The book is an interesting study of class as well. An example of this is the relationship between the Mortmains and a young boy who lives with them, Stephen. Stephen was the son of their former maid/nanny who remained with the family after she died. However, the family still views him as a servant even though he is the only one providing for the family, bringing in income and sharing it with the whole family. Cassandra looks upon him with a combination of love and disdain.


The character of Cassandra, as the narrator, is the central figure of the novel. It is fascinating to witness her evolution from a naive young child into a somewhat conniving and emotionally complex young woman in a matter of a very short time as she begins to experience the world in a more socially complex way and starts to feel the pangs of love and hormones.


The novel has a fun British sort of tone to it, reminiscent of Austen with a modern twist of PG Wodehouse. I think the novel reveals the kind of British humor that you see in quirky Britcom shows and movies.


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Am I as old as I feel?

I had the epiphany today that for the first time in my life, I actually feel, mentally speaking, younger than I actually look and am in years. My mom used to say that I was born pushing 40. I guess now that I actually am, I want to turn back the clock.

I have always felt that I should be older-- that I was somehow mature beyond my years in terms of my serious nature and the incredibly (to the rest of the world) trivial intellectual pursuits constantly occupy my thoughts. I somehow thought that when I reached an age when I felt that I was as mature on the outside as I was on the inside that somehow people would take me more seriously and I would have arrived, so to speak. Well somehow I have missed that moment, and if I ever arrived, that train is pulling out of the station.

Book Review-- the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (there are no caps in the title on the cover of the book) is a kind of murder-mystery told from the perspective of the narrator, one Christopher John Francis Boone, a teen who lives in a small British town with his father. Christopher discovers his neighbor's dog, Wellington, impaled on a pitchfork, and is assumed to be the dog's killer. Upon being released to his father's care, he determines that he will become a detective and solve the mystery of the dog's demise. In the process, he writes a book detailing the things he learns in the course of his investigation. Oh, one more thing, Christopher is autistic. Christopher learns way more than he bargained for, and the reader learns along with him.

Christopher is not only the narrator of this book, but is also something of a hero as he enters into a kind of epic journey and learns to deal with a whole new paradigm. We get the opportunity to see the world through Christopher's perspective and can acknowledge how insane many things about our world can be when viewed through a strictly logical lens. This can be amusing such as when Christopher points out the silliness of common metaphors:

I laughed my socks off.

He was the apple of her eye.

They had a skeleton in the cupboard.

We had a real pig of a day. (Never heard that one)

The dog was stone dead.

Christopher says, "I think a metaphor should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards."

Of course, Christopher's world doesn't make perfect sense either. For example, he hates the color yellow, and evaluates his days categorizes his days as Good, Quite Good, Super Good, and Black. A Black Day is a day when he sees 4 yellow cars in a row on the way to school. On Black Days, Christopher refuses to work, eat, or speak.

There are other interesting visual, numerical, and linguistic problems and details included throughout the book that help not only develop the plot, but also help explain how Christopher deals with the world.

I found this book fascinating, and it is such a great device to have a narrator with this kind of unique voice allowing the reader to anticipate the things that Christopher doesn't see, to see things that the reader would never normally notice, and to have great empathy and compassion for Christopher and his parents.

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