Capturing it on paper
THEY SAY THAT each of us has at least one novel in our head just waiting to be let out. But getting down to actually putting the story on paper is the mission impossible for most people. You have to be a professional novelist to write a novel, and ordinary people just don't do such things, they say. They leave novel writing to the professionals, just like they leave brain surgery and building houses to the experts.
Cassandra Mortmain is an ordinary 17-year-old who decides to write a novel. She has already written one or two poems, but feels her poetry is so bad that it's become a waste of time.
She doesn't have any great novel-writing plan, and she doesn't really know where her novel is going or where it will end. She just sits down and begins to write.
Cassandra's novel is about her life and family. It is divided into three diaries.
She watches, and occasionally takes part in events, but always writes everything down. She observes her family and the people who come into her life, and captures them all in her notebook. Writing a novel is not as difficult as everyone says.
The Mortmains live in a cold, derelict castle in the English countryside. They have no money and live each day as it comes.
Cassandra's father James hides away from his family, spending most of his time reading cheap detective novels. He once wrote a successful book himself, and everybody thought he had a glittering writing career ahead of him. Instead, he wrote nothing after his first book, and now lives like a recluse. Some people say he has a personality disorder, and others say his writing career was destroyed through drink. But the truth is he is just getting through life the best way he knows how.
Rose, Cassandra's 21-year-old sister, is beautiful, vain and bored. She feels trapped in the lonely castle and longs to break away from her family.
Cassandra's stepmother, Topaz, used to model for famous artists, but her beauty is fading. And then there is Stephen, adopted into the Mortmain family as a young boy. He is hopelessly in love with Cassandra and will do anything to please her.
These are the people in Cassandra's small world. But there is a world outside the castle, and when intruders break into the Mortmain's closed existence, Cassandra's life is turned upside down. It all goes into her novel. She records the changing events with humour and honesty as she tries to understand her own feelings. This is what writing a novel is all about.
Dodie Smith, the world famous author of 101 Dalmations, wrote I Capture The Castle in 1949. The success of this gem of a novel has been greatly overshadowed by the fame of Smith's spotted dog saga, but happily I Capture The Castle has now been repackaged and republished for a new generation of readers to discover and enjoy.
It is an eccentric and gripping story with sharp dialogue and wonderful, bizarre, fully fleshed characters. Smith's skilful, humorous writing is at its best in this captivating tale.
J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has said Cassandra is one of the most charismatic characters she has ever met in a novel. Praise indeed for a teenager who simply wanted to write.
I Capture The Castle
By Dodie Smith
Published by Random House
ISBN 0 09 984500 8
