Cassandra Mortmain lives with her impoverished family in a crumbling castle. Her journal records her life with her bored sister Rose, her stepmother Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when American heirs to castle arrive.
Review
I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers -- Joanna Trollope
Everyone I've passed it on to has found it a hit - it works every time, for absolutely everybody -- Nigella Lawson
Smith rivals Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate series for 1930s toff charm -- Katy Guest, The Independent
A deliciously evocative portrait of England -- Tasmina Perry, Daily Mail
Dreamy and funny...an odd, shimmering timelessness clings to its pages. A thousand and one cheers for its reissue. A +, Entertainment Weekly
From the Inside Flap
This enchanting novel tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her unusual family who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Cassandra?s eccentric father is a writer whose first book took the literary world by storm but he has since failed to write a single word and now spends his time reading detective fiction. Cassandra?s sister, Rose, despairs of her family?s circumstances and determines to marry their affluent Am