Charmed.

(This post is rather lengthy, I know — I’ve just wanted to write about this book for so long!)
There was one book I forgot to list down among my top picks for 2008, one of the buzzer beaters, which I finished on the 28th of December: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

Dodie Smith’s more famous work is the children’s story The 101 Dalmatians, but before that, she wrote a novel entitled I Capture the Castle in 1948.

I only learned about I Capture the Castle because J.K. Rowling named it as one of her favorite books — I love the books she recommends; my cousin and I discovered the Cirque du Freak series also because JKR raved about them.

I found a fairly new copy at Book Sale (the best! I swear!) last year, but it took a few more months before I finally found an opportunity to read it without interruptions — on my holiday trip after Christmas, where I indulged in a lot of fresh air and four days of reading bliss.

Meet the Mortmains

I Capture the Castle is the journal of 17-year old Cassandra Mortmain, who lives with her eccentric family in a crumbling English castle in the countryside in the 1930s.

The Mortmains are dirt-poor but such characters! Cassandra’s father (she calls him Mortmain) is something of a one-hit wonder writer. His first book, “Jacob Wrestling” was a big hit in the past decade, prompting him to move his family to the countryside for inspiration, although it never came — he has a ten-year old case of writer’s block. The Mortmains have a 40-year lease on the castle, but over the years, they have had to sell off all the good furniture just so they can buy food.

Cassandra’s mother has passed away early on, so her father remarries the young Topaz, who is well-meaning but flighty. She is a model who poses nude for artists, and habitually “communes with nature” (er, frolics in the meadow) in nothing but hipboots.

Cassandra’s elder sister, Rose, is the family beauty (golden haired and rosy-cheeked) who despairs of being poor and wants to hook a rich husband (her main fantasy is to live in a Jane Austen novel). Their younger brother, Thomas, is often away at school on a scholarship courtesy of the local vicar, and although he doesn’t appear often, he is quite endearing as well.

The family also includes Stephen Colly, the son of one of their old servants, who continues to help out around the house even though they have nothing to pay him and he ends up getting a job outside to contribute towards the family budget. Stephen also happens to be in love with Cassandra, but unfortunately, Cassandra loves him like a brother.

Finally, there is the snowy-white bull terrier Heloise, who rounds out the family picture.

Things change for the family one fateful night, in a rather comical episode. Rose is overcome with despair about being poor, and attempts to do a Faust by hauling herself up on a pulley to wish upon the gargoyle mounted high on their kitchen fireplace. That same night, they meet the Cottons — the rich family who are now the landlords to the castle, including their two bachelor sons, Neil and Simon.

I will have to stop there before I reveal any more of the story, but more amusing episodes follow, and even as I’m writing this, I can’t help but laugh at the memory — the bathtub confrontation, the fur incident, the two wireless radios, the lockup in the tower… Equally plentiful are the sigh-inducing moments that make the book a throwback to 19th century English novels like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre.

Cassandra and Rose also remind me of the March girls in Little Women, especially when they had to dress up for dinner at the Cottons’. Rose reminds me of Meg and Jo, when they had to go to a party and had to make do with shabby gowns. The sisters also keep an old dress form in their room, christened as “Miss Blossom,” whom they pour their hearts out to whenever they’re troubled.

A heroine like no other

I Capture the Castle is one of this century’s most beloved novels, and now I know why — Cassandra Mortmain can charm the socks off a stone monument!

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy.”

This is how the novel begins, and it sets the tone for the rest of the story. It’s Cassandra’s voice that is the cornerstone of this book, and it reveals a guileless, intelligent, and feisty teenage girl, one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading about.

She says the most original things, and outside of EM Forster’s A Room with a View, I don’t think I’ve ever read so many lines that spoke to me all in one book! Most of the lines that struck a chord with me in this book were Cassandra’s random thoughts — some plain amusing, some thought-provoking, and others just overflowing with emotion. Her uncanny wit and sharp perception make the book such a delightful read.

Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:

On life:

“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”

“Time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.”

“I wonder if there isn’t a catch about having plenty of money? Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things?”

“I should rather like to tear these last pages out of the book. Shall I? No-a journal ought not to cheat.”

On contemplation:

“Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.”

“I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.”

“I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious…”

“I have noticed that when things happen in one’s imaginings, they never happen in one’s life.”


On family:

“The family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts never quite wish to.”


On writing:

“I only want to write. And there’s no college for that except life.”

“Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with ‘I love you, I love you’– like father’s page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn’t warrant a waste of good paper.”

I hope these beautiful lines tempt you to read the book, because I don’t know anyone else who has read it, and I’d love to talk about the book with someone :)

There is a 2003 movie on the book, but I’m afraid to watch it because it might ruin the book for me. If anyone has watched it, please let me know how you found it, especially if you’ve read the book too.

***
My copy: trade paperback, bought at Book Sale for P170 (yes, I shelled out P170 at Book Sale for this — so much worth it!)

My rating: 5/5 stars

Oh, the drama!

It took me over a year to go and read Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (also avoiding the movie like the plague) because I have a built-in aversion to books that are overly hyped or foisted on me by other people.

I dragged my feet for about six more months, then I decided to bring it along on a trip after Christmas. That’s another book-related habit of mine: whenever I go on trips, I always take books I have trouble starting, or books I have been hedging on for a long time, just so I’ll be forced to read them.

I’m not going to summarize it anymore, as most people have probably read it, and if not, it’s easy enough to look up on the internet. But despite the fact that I have never met anyone who’s read the book and not raved about it, I would have to say that it wasn’t particularly groundbreaking for me.
While the writing was fluid, I felt like I was reading something out of Chicken Soup for the Soul. The book seemed to be engineered to tug at the reader’s heartstrings. How can it not, with the cast of characters that are designed for the perfect tragedy? The flawed Amir who is weak and prone to doing things you just know he’ll regret, the meek and devoted Hassan, the gruff Baba who turns out to be a sad man with a lot of secrets, the equally meek and devoted Ali, the father-substitute Rahim who serves as his moral compass, and the tyrannical Assef who seems to come straight out of a B movie!
Each plot device read like a cue for the waterworks to start, and I, who can cry at the drop of a hat, was tear-free for most of the book. I’m all for catharsis, and I love books that give me a good cry, but The Kite Runner was a shade too melodramatic for me.

It wasn’t a bad read, in total, but I could have passed on the book and I wouldn’t have felt the difference. In no hurry to read A Thousand Splendid Suns.

***

My copy: trade paperback, mooched from Cheche

My rating: 3/5 stars

Ahh, Casablanca…

The big 2-0!

Book #20 for 2009: The Tattooed Map by Barbara Hodgson

After my first illustrated novel of the year turned out to be a dud, I was wary of reading another one, lest it turns out to be a disappointment again.

To my pleasure, I warmed right up to The Tattooed Map, a beautiful squarish book full of maps, photos, scribblings, and other ephemera.

The Tattooed Map is the journal of Lydia Usher, a Canadian traveler who explores North Africa with her friend and former lover Christopher.


She wakes up in their hotel room one day to find what she thinks is a cluster of flea-bites on her hand. Days pass and she realizes the marks have formed into a map spreading from her hand to her body like a tattoo.

Lydia suddenly disappears and Christopher takes up her journal in the hopes of finding her, or at least a clue to her whereabouts. He soon discovers that it is no prank of Lydia’s, and as he is drawn deeper into the web of mystery, he realizes there are strange forces at work.


I really liked this book because it was the right blend of travelogue, art and mystery. Lydia leads such an enviable life. Her research takes her to exotic places, she takes off at a moment’s notice, and never seems to run out of pocket money. Her compulsive habit of taking scrupulous travel notes take you right there with her, and her candid observations allow you to visualize the places she goes to and the people she meets.

The other half of the journal is continued by a befuddled Christopher, up until the tumultous ending that makes you want to cry out “Sequel! Sequel!” after reading that last sentence.


For a first novel, The Tattooed Map doesn’t disappoint, and I am eagerly adding Barbara Hodgson to the list of authors whose works I am collecting. It’s good I have one more book of hers in my TBR: Hippolyte’s Island. I think I’ll save that for a time when I’m in dire need of a good read.

***
My copy: hardcover, about P140

My rating: 4.5/5 stars

Picture books make me smile

Books 18 and 19 for 2009


Got two new books for my picture book collection – I Hate to Read! by Rita Marshall, illustrated by Etienne Delessert, and the 1991 Caldecott Medal awardee Black & White by David Macaulay. I tell myself I collect them for reference in illustration, but I can’t deny I have fun reading them too :)

I mooched I Hate to Read! from fellow Flipper akaShy because the title was intriguing, and the illustrations appealed to me.

The story is about Victor Dickens, a kid who hates to read. One day, as he pretends to read a book so that he could watch TV, characters start jumping out to invite him to read: a crocodile in a white coat, a field mouse, a peg-legged parrot, a white rabbit wearing black boots, a frog with a broken feather in his cap, and many more.
And then his visions get stranger and stranger until he felt sad that all the characters’ stories would be lost if nobody read them.

The story didn’t quite work for me, as it didn’t build up sufficiently to the conclusion. Victor’s transition from non-reader to reader was abrupt and confusing, and so it’s not very convincing.

Etienne Delessert’s illustrations, however, save the book from being just another picture book. The watercolor illustrations have a whimsical quality that charms from the get-go, and breathes life to comical characters. I especially love the field mouse with a cat in its backpack (it’s like the Totoro Catbus with mouse headlights!)

Check it out on google books

The second book in this selection is David Macaulay’s Black and White, which I’ve been in search of for some time now (I am collecting the Caldecotts).

It’s a po-mo picture book that was given so much thought to that it boggles the mind.

The title page greets you with a cryptic note: “This book appears to contain a number of stories that do not necessarily occur at the same time.”

Then, each spread is divided into four frames that tell what appear to be four different stories, illustrated in different styles: wash, comic, inked watercolor, and chunky paint.

The first story, on the upper left hand, is “Seeing Things,” depicting a boy on a train, whose trip is interrupted by a long delay. On the lower left is “Problem Parents,” showing a family’s life turned upside down when the kids’ perfectly normal parents come home wearing newpaper clothes. On the upper right, the third story is “A Waiting Game,” where a crowd of commuters waiting on the train platform get bored and decide to have fun with some newspapers. Finally, on the lower right, “Udder Chaos” follows an escaped convict hiding within a herd of cows.

The overlapping elements reveal that the four stories are part of another story — the convict hides in the cattle, which cross the tracks and cause the train’s delay, which the boy witnesses. At the station, waiting for the train makes the crowd desperate for entertainment, causing them to play with the newspapers. Among those in the crowd are the parents, who come home wearing newspapers, to the surprise of their children.

It’s not easy to decipher, and who’s to say these are the only interpretations of the story, as it depends on the reader’s imagination. I love how the book makes you think and pay attention to detail. In “Waiting Game” there is even a hidden story of a squirrel (smaller than my thumbnail) who joins in the merrymaking.

It’s an amazing effort, and a very nice way of opening up your mind to various possibilities.

***
My copies: I Hate To Read, hardcover, no dustjacket – mooched from akaShy. Black and White, rummaged at Book Sale for P95.

My rating: I Hate to Read, 3/5 stars; Black and White, 5/5 stars