Reviews

Vision is the thing that gets us from one point on the map to the other. It’s both an idea and a sense. It allows us to make something from the images in our heads, the images we collect through life and that inspire us to create. When James Mortmain drives upon a crumbling castle in Suffolk county, he does so under the presumption that he will be following up his literary debut of Jacob Wrestling with many other great modern works, but the village librarian’s weekly trips to the Mortmain castle with dosages of mysteries to read for James soon become routine, and all hopes of him producing another book goes out the door along with the furniture, the car, and handfuls of clothes. As we meet the Mortmain family with Cassandra writing in a notebook sitting in the kitchen sink, we receive our first impression of the castle, who inhabits it, and how this family interacts with each other within its walls. There is Cassandra, the young writer; her older sister Rose, the desperate maid; her step-mother Topaz, a former artists’ model who takes to walking the castle in the nude and “communing with nature;” Thomas, her younger, astute brother; Stephen, the late caretaker’s son; and her father James, the nearly hopeless modern novelist.

Our first architectural visual of the castle comes in the form of a journal entry Cassandra writes. This description, in its most literal interpretation, begins to showcase the title of the book. Cassandra harkens us back to when they drove out to find the castle after failed attempts at house hunting. Their father, unhappy with the residential, cookie-cutter homes, wouldn’t settle for anything less than the castle once he saw the signpost, “To Belmotte And The Castle Only.” His own fascination with the Victorian structure fed Cassandra’s romanticism.

How strange and beautiful it looked in the late afternoon light! I can still recapture that first glimpse–see the sheer grey stone walls and towers against the pale yellow sky, the reflected castle stretching towards us on the brimming moat, the floating patches of emerald-green water-weed. No breath of wind ruffled the looking-glass water, no sound of any kind came to us. Our excited voices only made the castle seem more silent.

In the beginning of the book, we learn that the family wages are nil, there has not been an ounce of income since the previous Christmas, and by March they are still living on a tallboy sold in December. They eat bread with margarine (the margarine being a real treat), drink tea, and rely almost wholly on the vegetable garden that Stephen tends. The girls take turns sleeping on a four poster and they have to write by candlelight in the nighttime as they do not have electricity. The dank and quiet setting of the castle, though poor, still grasps at shreds of romanticism, however, and is a complete joy to Cassandra, who rather relishes the monetary dearth of her family’s financial situation. Later in the book, after being introduced to all the frivolities money can buy, she finds wealth too expendable for her taste and harbors a certain nostalgia for what bare living can do for a person’s soul. She has accepted, perhaps the best of her family members, the strains of being poor and how it affects life in the castle, and in doing this captures the place in a way that transcends its architecture.

These thrills for riches come, especially in Rose’s favor, in the form of two brothers from America: Simon and Neil Cotton. Of course, their entrance into the story sends Rose into a frizzy of romance as she pines for Simon, and the situation of the brothers’ ownership of the castle makes their pairing even more convenient as the courting mounts and sets off. We are tugged along by Cassandra’s budding emotions on the subject of men and the feelings they elicit in the young female heart. She is so unpracticed in this foreign trail of womanhood. We start to see the parallel between her intent to capture the castle as a shelter and livelihood as it merges with this new idea of capturing love. The idea that the castle, connected to the brothers, connected to the romantic interests of Cassandra and Rose, create a swelling circular dynamic.

By the end we learn that the art of capturing anything first comes from learning how to successfully capture yourself–not only in an artistic way, but the idea of capture in its most basic human form. Cassandra learns, and we along with her, that to capture something isn’t merely putting visions into words, but truly understanding their depths until you can break them down into fragments and put the pieces back together without missing any shards. She teaches us through her writing that even something so ambiguous as faith can be captured in a way unique to the pursuer. In the symbol of the crumbling castle paralleling her family’s crumbling life, her journey in capturing the castle becomes more a testament to aligning herself with the realities of her life and the ferocity of her hope, and we learn that even though the castle crumbles, it still remains a poised monument to a young girl who grew there into a young woman.

njdarkish's review against another edition

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3.0

I enjoyed the writing style but ultimately the story didn't really grab me.

julia212's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.75

catladyreads26's review against another edition

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hopeful lighthearted reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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