I Capture the Castle is a book about reading, and a book about the history of the English novel, and how different formations of the novel butt up against each other and fight, which is catnip to a certain kind of reader. They have read I Capture the Castle and fallen under its immensely charming and slightly melancholy spell, and they know that everyone else who loves that book must be a kindred spirit. They have strong opinions about whether Cassandra and Simon Cotton ought to be together (they should not, Simon does not deserve Cassandra) and whether the 2003 movie adaptation was any good (it was not, young Henry Cavill was inspired casting for Stephen but everything else was nonsense). It’s a club whose members daydream about dyeing all their clothes green, as the penniless Mortmain family does when they can’t afford to buy anything new, and drinking cherry brandy outside an English country village inn, the way 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain does with her sister and her sister’s two suitors. Once you read it, you fall in love with it, and from then on you’re part of a secret club, self-selecting and wildly enthusiastic. It’s not quite famous, even among Smith’s works (her most famous title would be 101 Dalmati a ns), but for a certain kind of reader - mostly women, mostly bookish - it is perfect. I Capture the Castle is that kind of book. “Every time I meet someone who also loves I Capture the Castle,” writes Jenny Han in her foreword to the new edition of Dodie Smith’s 1948 classic, “I know we must be kindred spirits.”
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