everything is romantic

on preemptive yearning

‘I write this sitting in my kitchen sink.’

These are the opening lines to Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, which tells the story of an eclectic family—a writer father who hasn’t penned a word in decades, a lute-playing stepmother known for taking nude walks on the heath, our “consciously naive” protagonist Cassandra, her beautiful, irascible sister, t…