Pedro Vincius Correia Gama Vincius Correia Gama itibaren Nakasipara, West Bengal, India
Could this be my favorite book? Maybe. I didn’t read it until I was an adult, in my mid-twenties but I wished I’d read it as a teen. I would have been able to identify with Cassandra so much. The kooky family, responsible for their own impoverished state and in a rut, unable to fix their situation; the beautiful, status-crazy older sister; the writerly ambitions; the all-encompassing, instantaneous crushes. I could have been Cassandra. What amazes me is this book was published back in, the thirties maybe? How racy it must have been then, how modern some of Cassandra’s thoughts and ambitions were! The book doesn’t end neatly either. She isn’t swooped up, married off. There wasn’t a fairy tale ending for this princess, and I don’t think she would have wanted one anyway. I sometimes wonder what WW2 would have done to these characters. What new and different directions would Cassandra’s life have taken? If only Smith wrote a sequel…but then again, I’m kind of glad she didn’t. In leaving it open-ended, I’m able, 60+ years later, to speculate and imagine my own ending.