This 1949 novel is one of the best ever. Do yourself a favor and read it before I talk about it. It seems criminal that I'm not writing a book about a giant unwieldy house while reading this. How could it be? I adore this book, then I got all mad at the ending, then when I went over it again, I had misread it—the ending is exactly right. Hurray! Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle is overtly a retelling of Pride and Prejudice except instead of being about either of those things, it’s about genteel poverty and what it’s okay to do to get out of it. The poverty is no joke in this book. Get ready to appreciate your fridge and pantry, as well as electricity and hot and cold running water. And that closet full of clothes. The characters deal with it, but aren’t about that, really, any more than the Bennets are about being on the edge of homelessness at any moment, if anything happens to Mr. Bennet. It’s huge and central to their lives, but they are about so much more. Cassandra is...
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