I write this lying in bed (not sitting in the kitchen sink), glued to my smartphone screen （just as a lot of Goodreads users do, I presume?） Next to my pillow are lots of post-its and a mind-mapping notepad with random ideas written on them because without them I don’t know how I’m going to organise my flooding thoughts ―not sure whether thoughts can actually flood, but that is what I imagine is happening in my head right now― on I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. A teacher once told me that it is always the safest way to begin a book review with a synopsis. I’ve decided that is exactly what I’m going to do.
Synopsis begins here.
Cassandra Mortmain is a 17-year-old girl whose behavior apparently gives some people an impression of a ‘consciously naive’ kid. She begins journaling to improve her speedwriting, whatever that is. The word wasn’t even in my copy of LDOCE. It must be something to do with writing at a great speed anyway, and Cassandra does seem capable of writing as fast as she thinks. The diary is written during the period of six months in the 1930s. The reader is introduced to her family members, who live in a dilapidated English castle in Suffolk. Cassandra’s beautiful 21-year-old sister Rose is gregarious, an adjective with which the actor who played Cassandra in a film adaptation describes Rose, and I liked the sound of it. I must say she is a bit liable to sulkiness. The poor thing is in despair because she is deprived of a future of meeting any marriageable men. Cassandra and Rose are good friends. Every night, they have a little after-lights-out chat. (‘Which would be nicest ― Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?’) There is also a bright schoolboy brother called Thomas. Mr Mortmain is a writer, except he hasn’t written a single word since the publication of his experimental novel Jacob Wrestling, which took off about 12 years ago in the US. The family decided to move to the castle they now live in when his first wife was still alive. A few years after her death, he remarries Topaz, an artist’s model. For all her oddity with her routine of ‘communing with nature’ in the nude, she is really an innocuous stepmother, even lovable unlike so many stepmothers in fairytales. Living in an old castle does sound like something out of a fairytale. However, the reality is far, far from it. The royalties from Mr Mortmain’s book are now drying up, and they sold most of the furniture they owned to make ends meet. To give you an idea of how poor they are, according to the ‘Earning Capacity for Present Year’, the amount of money earned by the Mortmains per week is ‘nil’ in total. The family is completely dependent on Stephen, the son of their former maid (now dead), who lives with the family and feeds them. He is good-looking and is doted on Cassandra. He steals poetry to give her, though. Then there are the rich Cottons brothers, Simon and Neil, who come from the US and stay in the nearby manor house they own. So here they are. Two unmarried, penniless young sisters and a pair of eligible, rich young men visiting them by chance. A romance or two are on the way.
I am not sure if I have succeeded in summarising the story so far. Am I just describing the main characters? Better leave that job to Cassandra because she is a very good writer.
End of synopsis.
The next thing to do is to write what you think of the book. Well, I love, love, love this book!
——No, that wouldn’t do. I need to explain why, I know. The problem is that the more I like a certain book, the more difficult it is for me to put into words why I like it so much. Just saying ‘the book was absolutely fantastic’ (or put any adjective of this kind) is easy enough, but it seems to mean so little. (It even makes it sound kind of boring.) I want to treat the book with more care. I want to capture it so that it can remain something special to me, something I can look back on later in my life. Words fail me although they are meant to be one of the strongest means of understanding as well as expressing things. Which reminds me of the saying ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ ―whatever that means. But then I sometimes think the pen is just like the sword in the sense that, if not used wisely, it is capable of killing the very thing the writer is trying to capture. Writing about things you love can be scary as well as exciting at once, is it not? Is that why Stephen steals poetry by famous poets to express his love for Cassandra instead of creating his own, the fear of failing having got the better of him? Anyway, I am going to give it a try. I’d rather fail than not write anything.
What I love the most about this book is that it is written in the form of a diary, that is, the pre-bujo-fad diary that a person keeps as a confidante and write in it random things that come to her mind. Apart from the combo of a teenage girl and a diary making a perfect picture, I think it also plays a vital role in giving a very raw, organic feel to her story. I cannot imagine it being written in any other styles. A journal should never be read by anyone but the writer (I would rather die than let anyone read my diary! The very thought of it is revolting.), and it therefore allows her the freedom to write whatever she feels like writing. There are no rules nor anyone judging her writing whatsoever. Cassandra carries this personal domain of freedom with herself and writes whenever she has the time. Sometimes she is driven to write just to ‘satisfy her creative urge’. Sometimes she writes as if to preserve beautiful memories in a bottle so that when she opens it again, she can re-live those moments. Sometimes she writes to explore her own confused mind. When she is in the zone, it’s like the pen is leading her thoughts. (Is it? Or did I steal this ‘pen leading one’s thoughts’ phrase from some sort of article on diary-keeping and then casually put it there? It doesn’t sound like the kind of phrase I would come up with by myself.) And sometimes, if I may add, words do fail, or at least she struggles to capture things. There are lots of contradictions, interruptions and sudden shifts of thought. I think that is what I really like about the book. There is always spontaneity in what she writes. As you read, you can almost hear her voice speaking directly to you. Even when I was not reading, I felt haunted by her voice, sometimes even finding myself narrating my own life with details in a Cassandraesque fashion, which I realise might sound incredibly creepy but I hope makes sense.
I initially intended to write about other things to make this post sound more intellectual such as Simon’s beard being a symbol of masculinity or the castle being a symbol of lost childhood, but I don’t think I’m fit for that kind of stuff. My brain won’t work anyway, so I suppose I just have to drop them.
...No, I won’t. That masculinity bit is rubbish, but I find the castle-lost-childhood association quite romantic. In fact, I just remember reading the introduction of the book, which said Dodie Smith had written the novel reminiscing about England while she was in the US during the war. Perhaps to Dodie, quaint old castles represent a quality of Englishness and her longing for England. At the same time, the England she loved became a thing of the past, just like those castles. Somehow, it would never be the same as the one before the war. So she got the urge to keep it in words as she remembered, that is, in the form of I Capture the Castle. I begin to think that the ‘I’ in the title is Dodie herself. (The title appears in Cassandra’s diary when she is describing the castle.) If that is the case, I think Dodie did ( or 'does'? I'm thinking about the tense correspondence rule, but then Dodie is a deceased person so the verb should be in the past tense? Oh I'm so confused!) a very good job.
Ps. I just realised that I hadn’t given a thought to my post-its & mind-mapping notes till I finished writing this post.