A beautiful hardback edition of one of the most gorgeous, funny, and heartbreaking novels ever written. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink" is the first line of this timeless, witty, and enchanting novel about growing up. Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fading glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas, and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive, and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time. "I know of few novels that inspire as much fierce lifelong affection in their readers" - Joanna Trollope. "This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met" - J. K. Rowling. One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. Vintage quarterbound classics: bound to be beautiful.