Dodie Smith · 1948 · coming-of-age

Dodie Smiths beloved 1948 novel, narrated in the journals of Cassandra Mortmain, who sets out to capture her family and their strange life in a decaying castle in rural Suffolk. Her father is a blocked writer, her stepmother an artists model, her sister longing to marry money; and when the American Cotton brothers arrive as the new landlords, first love and its complications sweep in. Mostly bound to the castle and its village, the story reaches out to the market town and to London as Cassandra grows up.

1. 1
   The Castle

   Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain writes her journal in the kitchen sink of a crumbling castle in the Suffolk countryside, where her eccentric family lives in genteel poverty.

2. 2
   Scoatney Hall

   The nearby manor of Scoatney is let to the Cotton family, whose two American sons turn the sisters quiet lives upside down.

3. 3
   Kings Crypt

   The market town of Kings Crypt, where the family shops and catches the train, and where fortunes are quietly made and lost.

4. 4
   London

   Cassandra travels up to London, discovering the wider world beyond the moat as she comes of age.

5. 5
   The Castle

   She returns to the castle and her writing, having captured, at last, something true about love and growing up.