This was Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. I have no idea how it is that I have never read this before as I must have known of its existence for 50 years or more. Somehow it never came my way.
In a way I wish I had read it when I was in my late teens as she captures so accurately all the difficult emotions and thought processes of that age, but there again perhaps that would have led me to wallow, rather than reminisce. And I wouldn't have appreciated how well she writes about girls of that age had I still been one, because that would have seemed as natural to me as breathing and nothing that took any writerly skill. But f course it takes a good deal.
The book was funny and touching and charming by turns, with - good heavens! likeable people. Some of them, it is true, behave in less than likeable ways some of the time, but it's behaviour that is understandable within the terms of their characters and situations. And surprisingly, for a book first written in 1949 and set in the period before World War 2 it has dated very little.
Definitely a hit for me.
One of my all-time favourites.
ReplyDeleteI am, let us say, north of the halfway mark and have also never read this. Maybe I will now . . .
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