Book #92: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

This may expose my naïveté and lack of familiarity with other parts of the world, but I'll say it anyways: every time I read books about young girls in romantic situations in England, it makes me think of Pride and Prejudice. I Capture the Castle is completely different than P&P, of course. It's set in the English countryside, but it's more than 100 years later, and nobody in the book is trying to get married off (okay, the sister of the heroine is). So there's really no reason to make any comparisons to Austen (the characters in the book even do talk about Jane a few times), but it seems inevitable, even as they are driving around the countryside in cars and doing unthinkable things like kissing their beaus (shocking!). This book is about Cassandra Mortmain, as a kind of coming-of-age story about how she falls in love for the first time. But honestly, the romance wasn't even my favorite part of this story--it just seemed very one-sided (as in, Cassandra longing after the man her sister was engaged to and him being in love with her sister) and I never really saw why she fell in love with the man in the first place. But I did love how this book was ostensibly Cassandra's journal, where she recorded her thoughts and impressions about her family and people around her, and how all those impressions and stories were so clear and filled with her own personality and thoughts. I also loved the circumstance of the family in which she was writing--she and her family lived in "genteel poverty" in an old castle, one that was almost in ruins, and without hardly any furniture or food or any sort of income (because everything had been sold eventually to buy the necessary parts of life). It seemed so interesting how they all lived lives that seemed relatively unencumbered, even though they really didn't have any money. Her father had once been a famous writer but had not written anything in years, so they had no income. I loved Cassandra's portraits of her family, and her own recognitions of her limitations as a writer and her abilities to "capture" anyone or anything, other than herself. And in the end, she has to grow up and decide what she really wants out of life, while dodging romance from undesirable sources and figuring out who she really is in love with. It was a great story with some great people and characters that I really enjoyed reading. I didn't love, love it--I would probably need to love, love the romance for that to happen--but it was definitely worth my while.