Dodie Smith

While Dodie Smith is best known as the author of 101 Dalmatians, she also wrote the strange and wonderful mid-20th century coming-of-age novel I Capture the Castle. I Capture the Castle was a cult classic for decades, but the book was recently re-released (featuring a glowing review from J.K. Rowling stamped across the cover in really big print) and made into a film, so I expect that circulation has picked up considerably.

The events of I Capture the Castle are seen through the painfully candid diary entries of 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, who lives with her eccentric family in a decrepit castle in the English countryside, clinging to "genteel" poverty by a tattered thread. Intelligent and unsentimental, Cassandra records six months of her family's life, including her older sister's disastrous attempts at making a life for herself, their novelist father's bizarre history, and her own awkward steps toward adulthood.

Aftertaste:
While it's impossible not to like Cassandra, I was appalled by the way she treats the young man who lives with her. He's an (unpaid!) servant who's a little dim, but handsome, hardworking, and sincerely in love with her, and she clearly regards him in the light of a family pet. Not only did this behavior display an awe-inspiring obliviousness to her own class prejudices, it also made Cassandra seem like an idiot, because compared to the complete tool she finally gets the hots for, the servant guy looks like quite a catch.

Availability:
Everywhere.

Other Recommendations:
Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton Porter

Dear Enemy, by Jean Webster

Greensleeves, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

And, for more modern tastes:
Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings, by Megan McCafferty

Born Confused, by Tanuja Desai Hidier