Love Stories? Valentine’s Day and Literature

I Capture the Castle // Dodie Smith
I’m not usually one for love stories and romantic novels, but this beautifully crafted masterpiece must truly be considered as one of the greats of modern literature. Written in the first person, I Capture the Castle is an account of Cassandra Mortmain’s life through her eyes as she tries to capture the strange, bohemian beauty that surrounds her.

At 17, Cassandra Mortmain lives at home with her beautiful but morose sister Rose, her ‘fadingly glamorous’ stepmother Topaz, her younger brother Thomas, and her distant, novelist father. Their home, a crumbling 16^th century castle, provides a perfect backdrop for a traditional love story, but Dodie Smith imbeds something original in her writing that draws the reader in to the dreamy, impoverished family, creating a rare, personal attachment between the characters and the reader.

There is an Austen-like flair to the novel, however it is the original setting that brings the story to life. The lush descriptions, expressed in perfectly composed sentences, make it a joy to real, and the complicated and bewildering feelings we all have as we move as children into adulthood are expressed in words perfectly. I have never been able to relate to a book more than when I read this for the first time and it is one that I re-read over and over again, each time finding new beauty in sentences I hadn’t admired before.

Even the ugliest notions are made hauntingly beautiful, and the feeling of youthful immortality and naivety is portrayed so well that “Thinking of death – strange, beautiful, terrible and a long way off – made me feel happier than ever”.

Words by Betsy Middleton

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