Rating: 
Summary: Interesting...but not so good ending
Review: A couple of my friends recommended this book to me since I was, at the time, reading Pride and Prejudice. The descriptions and commentary from Cassandra are wonderful and quite breathtaking, but the only setback is the ending which leaves one with many questions and is not satisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: Enchanting
Review: A seventeen-year-old girl and a six-hundred-year-old castle¡Ðwhat an interesting match! From the very start of the novel, the clever and humourous narration "captures" the reader's heart and keeps them in expectation all the way to the end. Reading it is such a delightful and enjoyable experience!
Rating: 
Summary: Teenage Love in 1930's England
Review: Cassandra keeps a journal as an exercise to practice writing and she records the events that occur over the period of about one year. She is a 17-year-old girl who lives in a rundown, but romantic castle in England with her family. Her father, James Mortmain wrote a novel years ago that was wildly successful and earned alot of money, but he hasn't written anything since and now the family is impoverished to the point of hunger. Cassandra is kept company by her older sister Rose and her eccentric stepmother Topaz while her younger brother Tom makes infrequent appearances because he is mostly in town at school. And then there is the servant Stephen, an extremely good-looking young man devoted to Cassandra. He so hates to see her hungry that he takes a job to contribute his earnings to the household. However, the father discourages any interest Cassy might have in Stephen because he is from a different social class. The real excitement starts about 100 pages into the book when the Cotton family arrives at the nearby Scoatney estate. Neil and Simon are wealthy Americans and Rose sets her sites on Simon because he is the heir. Anyone who has ever been poor can somewhat relate to the girls predicament. Rose's desire to marry wealth would not only ensure enough to eat and buy pretty new clothes for herself, it would ensure the same for her family (since her father shows no signs of changing and Simon is kind and generous). I think young adults would enjoy this book because the rest of the novel is about young love. The relationships lack real depth and the ending is somewhat open ended which some will like and others will find disappointing. I can't really imagine being 17 or 20 and being as naïve about boys as Cassy and Rose, but I suppose things used to be very different. The real charm of this novel is the enchanting atmosphere of the castle as depicted through Cassandra's rose-colored glasses. Most of the characters seem shallow and we didn't see enough of Stephen, the only person I actually admired, but somehow Cassy's rendering of the whining characters makes them likeable.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful tale of sisterhood, first love & family loyalties
Review: Cassandra Mortmain is the middle child in an eccentric English family. Her father is a once-published, once-celebrated author who has had writer's block for years, and as a result, his wife and three children are on the brink of starvation, although they live in a crumbling, albeit leased, castle. They hope that their father will one day begin writing again, or that Cassandra's beautiful elder sister, Rose, will marry well and save them all. Enter the American Cotton brothers, who are wealthy and have just inherited the nearby estate of Scoatney, as well as the landlordship of the Mortmain's dwelling. Rose Mortmain and her stepmother see nothing but dollar signs as they scheme to marry Rose off to Simon, the eldest Cotton. But Cassandra has fallen for Simon herself... I was skeptical of this book because the cover was so outdated and plain. The story itself is set in the 1930's, but the book was published in 1948, and it seemed so dated. But once I started reading, I could scarcely put it down. This is classic English literature at its best, with a storyline that will pass from age to age without ever seeming old-fashioned. I highly recommend it and plan to keep my copy forever!!
Rating:
Summary: Let Yourself Be Captured
Review: Dodie Smith may be best-known as the author of The One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but she was the author of many hit West End plays and several best-selling books. If you enjoy mid-20th-century British fiction, may I recommend a perfect gem of a novel, back in print after many years a-languishing: I Capture the Castle, told in first-person narration by Cassandra Mortmain, the younger daughter of a family of impoverished eccentrics living in a small run-down castle in the British countryside, as she tries to "capture" her life in her private journal. Her father is a once-famous writer with a seemingly-insurmountable case of writer's block; her stepmother Topaz is an unusually-gorgeous former model with pretentions of artistry and a loving heart; her beloved sister Rose is hungry for some sort--any sort!--of change. Into this almost Austen-like situation comes Simon, the new landlord, an upper-class American from New England, along with his informal younger brother, raised in California, and their "club woman" mother, and suddenly the potentials and possibilities and coincidences become endlessly interesting...Will Simon propose to Rose? Will Mortmain ever write again? Will Cassandra's swain kiss her in the bluebell wood? Perhaps it doesn't sound like much, but it's engaging and endearing, a period-piece with "good bones" and long-lasting, pleasurable resonance, still holding up well after half a century on the shelves. On my top-40 list, certainly, if not my top-10. I can't recommend this one highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: Capture this book!
Review: I came across this book accidentally. My co-worker had it on the library reference desk. She said it was the next book in her book discussion group. After she told me a little about it I decided to read it. Then, I had second thoughts. So, I read reviews of it on Amazon. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to read it when I read that people said it was like Jane Austen would write if she was around today. Even though I'm a former English major and a librarian, I will commit the great heresy and admit I don't like Jane Austen. She's too hoity-toity for me. But, then, in a review I read the opening couple of sentences: "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy." This is such a great and intriguing opening that I had to know what was going on. I'm glad I decided to read it. It is a delightful novel, especially describing the poverty the Mortmains experience living in the castle. (You don't associate living in a castle with poverty! That, right there, makes the book different.) I have to admit, it does rather read like a modern Jane Austen and yet I didn't mind all the talk about who loved whom and who was going to marry whom. I also enjoyed sharing the challenge of getting James Mortmain to go back to his writing. It's a very good read with interesting characters, including the castle itself. And, if you like romances, you will really like this book.
Rating:
Summary: Capture this book!
Review: I came across this book accidentally. My co-worker had it on the library reference desk. She said it was the next book in her book discussion group. After she told me a little about it I decided to read it. Then, I had second thoughts. So, I read reviews of it on Amazon. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to read it when I read that people said it was like Jane Austen would write if she was around today. Even though I'm a former English major and a librarian, I will commit the great heresy and admit I don't like Jane Austen. She's too hoity-toity for me. But, then, in a review I read the opening couple of sentences: "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy." This is such a great and intriguing opening that I had to know what was going on. I'm glad I decided to read it. It is a delightful novel, especially describing the poverty the Mortmains experience living in the castle. (You don't associate living in a castle with poverty! That, right there, makes the book different.) I have to admit, it does rather read like a modern Jane Austen and yet I didn't mind all the talk about who loved whom and who was going to marry whom. I also enjoyed sharing the challenge of getting James Mortmain to go back to his writing. It's a very good read with interesting characters, including the castle itself. And, if you like romances, you will really like this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Lovely Narrator
Review: I CAPTURE THE CASTLE was recommended to me by an acquaintance when it became available a few years ago, in print after a long absence in the United States. It has become one of my favorite books not for it's depth or subject matter but for the shimmering state of existence it captures- that of a precocious girl becoming an intelligent young woman. Don't let the recent film adaptation prevent you from reading the book because its charm lies in the first person narration (something never captured in film) of Cassandra Mortmain. She chronicles her family's life in an old castle where her beautiful elder sister Rose chafes at her isolation and poverty, her father, the once promising author, continues to suffer from writer's block, his artist's model second wife, Topaz, makes the best of it, and the solid Stephen helps the family without pay. Their world is inevitably changed by the arrival of new American landlords and eligible bachelor brothers Simon and Neil Cotton. However what could become a trite romance or standard coming of age story is carefully avoided by the thoughtful honesty of its narrator tempered by the comedy of the situations and by a hint of the sadness that accompanies all change. I confess I have purchased eight copies of the book and given them to friends because of the transitory feeling it so accurately grasps. Set in the 1930's, the narration still feels fresh even if the social codes have changed. This is unlike Dodie Smith's famous work, 101 Dalmatians, though, it is perhaps more like her plays, indeed, she even wrote a stage version of I CAPTURE THE CASTLE. It is an imminently readable and enchanting book.
Rating:
Summary: I would give it more than 5 stars If I could!
Review: I have read this book because it is in the BBC big read list, and I loved it. I think this book will always stay in my "All Time Favourite" List along with books like Pride and Prejudice. Even thought I usually dont like books that doesnt tell me exactly what will happen to the character, but this one is an exception because it made me always think of the charatcters and what might happen to them.
Casandra is a really special character and you just feel like you are living with her when you read the book, she was just like a friend to me whom I have known for ages.
I would reccommend this book to anyone who enjoy reading diaries and romance. Their are also many parts that will make you laught.
I would say get it and have fun reading it. You will love it!!
Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable, imaginative, and wonderful book
Review: I loved this. I absolutely loved it. The lead character Cassandra was wonderful. She was so smart and romantic. She made me laugh and even cry a little. This has to be one of the most touching stories I have ever had the pleasure to read. I finished this book in a little over one sitting and I was so upset when it was over.I Capture the Castle is extremely romantic, yet very appropriate for young girls...not just older ones. This is a definite keeper. I would recommend it in an instant.
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