Customer Reviews

House on the Strand (Virago Modern Classics)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I like time travel books and will go out of my way to seek out a good one. In this novel, the author uses an unusual device for moving the hero around in time -- a potion that he drinks takes him to a time where he seems to have emotional connections with the people he meets.

While he is walking about in the past, in this case the Middle Ages, he is unseen by the people of the time. And in another interesting twist, while his mind is firmly experiencing past events, his body remains in the present, walking around the same terrain that his mind is exploring in the past. This means that his body can encounter present physical barriers that did not exist in the past, and vice versa. That makes for some oddly humorous, as well as dangerous scrapes for the hero. He is routinely injured, and one of his friends actually dies during time travel when he walks into a moving freight train.

This time travel device used by Du Maurier reminded me of the technique empolyed by Carl Sagan in his novel, Contact. Bear with me here, because this similarity is not as far-fetched as it might seem at first. In Sagan's book, the heroine travels through space/time to meet aliens, even though it looks to observers on the ground as though she went nowhere. Her body remains in the spacecraft, but somehow her mind makes the journey solo. This is essentially the same device used in the House on the Strand, although the latter has additional nice touches, such as a bond between the characters of both centuries and the land on which they live.

Overall, this is a very good adventure with a moral undercurrent that is subtle and resists being too "in-your-face" preachy. For me, that underlying message has to do with being present for one's life and resisting the impulse to spend too much time living in your head, regardless of how compelling you might find your own thoughts.

Imagine that after ingesting a simple chemical liquid, your brain somehow connects the genetic memory it has inherited and suppressed with the actual reality experienced by your ancestors. The result, as Dick Young, narrator of "the House on the Strand" discovers, catapults Dick's mind back into the depths of his genetic memory where modern Cornwall transforms to a battleground where a bloodthirsty struggle between 14th century landowners rages at a slightly accelerated pace from that of the present. As intriguing as the reader may find this premise, Dick Young finds it all the more so. For with each dose of the drug, Dick's body and mind become addicted to this otherworld, so much so that he ignores the responsibilities of his present life and places his marriage, livelihood and life in jeopardy.

As in other Du Maurier tales where she employs a male narrator, Dick falls prey to an older mentor, in this case biochemist researcher and designer of the genetic memory drug, Magnus Lane. (Oddly, although not biologically related, both Magnus and Dick conjur up the same historical characters as they 'journey' back to the Cornwall of the 14th century.) Interlaced within their perfect and insular relationship lies the same exclusionary sense experienced between Philip and Ambrose (My Cousin Rachel) and John and Jean (The Scapegoat)that no outsiders are welcome, particularly women---as in all these stories, the major woman character is either murdered or harmed in some dire way.

If the reader is expecting a time travel tale where the voyager entangles himself in the past, find another book. Dick serves as a guinea pig in this plotline; he observes the past through the conduit of the drug. The main gist of the novel revolves around Dick's all-consuming addiction rather than his experiences in another time.

Du Maurier uses real historical personnages in her depiction of Dick's "trips". The 'House on the Strand' was a house she actually lived in and whose past she researched. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys Du Maurier's knack of transporting the reader into the head of her narrator, eliciting both sympathy and emotional terror simultaneously.

The House on the Strand is a less-known book by Daphne DuMaurier, the woman who gave us Rebecca and Jamaica Inn. Here she interweaves past and present together in a novel that is just as rich as anything she has ever written.

Magnus Lane is a professor at the University of London, who has created a potion that can send you back in time. He uses his friend Dick Young as a "human guinea pig" to test its effects. Dick finds himself thrust back into the days of the 14th century, in the days of Isolda Carminowe and Henry and Otto Bodrugan, who lived in the exact place in which Dick has decided to vacation. Dick follows the knight Roger Kylmerth, and finds himself becoming more and more involved with the manor lords of the 1320's- with an almost disastrous effect upon himself and his family in the present time.

It is a novel in which past and present run at parallels with one another, and even almost collide. Its a haunting book, sinister in fact, in which time matters a great deal; a book which points out the fact that sometimes the present time is indistinguishable from the present. Its power will haunt you long after you have closed its covers.

Anyone who has ever read Rebecca knows that Daphne du Maurier was always ahead of her time. Her concern with what we now call Women's Issues was a hallmark in all of her works.

In none of her books is that more apparent than in The House on the Strand. Although the viewpoint character is male, the concern for women's rights still shines through.

If you have seen the TV miniseries 'The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan' or the motion picture 'Somewhere in Time' you will at first think that both of them somehow got their inspiration from this book when you first start reading it. But this is much deeper than either of those stories. While the major character does indeed flash backwards and forwards in time, his discoveries in the past help him understand his present circumstances. The emphasis then is not on his wanting to 'escape' the present, as in the two movies, but on wanting to understand how the present and the past interrelate.

Also, some of the minor characters are historically real, and this adds a lot of interest to the tale. It makes you want to go visit the area in southern England where the story is set, and do a little investigating for yourself.

Provides some real food for thought.

I wasn't expecting to like this book - my reaction to all time-travel stories can be pretty much summed up in one word -
"blah". So I was surprised to find myself enjoying the book. Du Maurier's prose is as excellent as ever. Her characterization, especially of Dick, is for most part compelling, though I felt that some of the characters from the past were somewhat lacking in depth. (Roger, Isolda, and Otto, however, were all powerfully realised.) I found the plot sufficiently well designed to keep me interested, and I appreciated the way the writer seamlessly wove the past into the present, as well as Dick's struggle to comprehend it all. The story as a whole possesses surprising depth, and I recommend it, particularly to du Maurier fans.

I love this book. Daphne DuMaurier has the ability to make the reader feel that he REALLY is back in 14th century England. Have you ever thought what it would be like to have your mind travel back into time, yet at the same time your body is still here? That other people can see you walking blindly along the road and up hills, yet your mind is in another world and you're seeing something totally different? This story is hauntingly real and has several surprising twists to the plot that will keep you mesmerized. I'm a voracious reader, yet this is my favorite book of all time.

The House on the Strand is narrated in the first person by Dick Young, who is staying at his friend Magnus's house in Cornwall and agrees to become a guinea pig for an incredible experiment. Magnus, a brilliant biochemist, has invented a powerful drug which takes the user back to the early 14th century...at least, in his head. Dick wanders around the past, seeing and experiencing everything with great clarity, while his body remains in the 20th century. He is unable to touch anything in the past, and is invisible to the people he sees.

The novel is divided in time between the 1960s and the late 1320s and early 1330s. Dick's 'guide' in the 14th century is Roger Kilmersh, who used to live in the house where Dick is staying, and who is the steward of Lady Joanna Champernoune. All the characters in the fourteenth century, Joanna, Otto Bodrugan, Isolda Carminowe, etc, really existed.

Dick becomes increasingly fascinated and obsessed with the people he is watching, their political intrigues, extra-marital affairs and even murder. He lies to his wife Vita in order to take the drug and 'go back' in time to see them, despite the physical side-effects he experiences - intense nausea, vertigo, disorientation, and, increasingly, mental confusion between the past and the present. His eye becomes terribly bloodshot and his hand becomes numb. Also, because he is traversing a 20th century landscape while his head is in the 14th century, he is unaware of dangers such as crossing roads and railway lines, and often ends up trespassing on private property, bruised, soaking wet and cut to pieces by hedges, marshes and so on he is simply unaware of encountering. His friend Magnus suffers a terrible accident on a railway line that simply does not exist in the reality inside his head.

As in some of Daphne du Maurier's other novels, the Cornish landscape here is almost a character in its own right, and her descriptions of the differences between the 14th and 20th century landscapes are incredibly vivid. She is almost unsurpassed at creating atmosphere, and Dick's mental and physical deterioration, and overriding obsesssion with Isolda Carminowe and the other 14th century people, is utterly compelling.

I've read House on the Strand four times now, and I never get remotely sick of it. Every time, it grabs me right from the first page - the novel begins with one of Dick's trips to the past - and I get utterly caught up with the characters past and present. The 14th century is brilliantly depicted, and like Dick, I'm fascinated by their lives. This novel is crying out to be made into a film! Highly recommended.

I enjoyed 'Rebecca' and wanted to try another of the author's books. "The House on the Strand" was an average read, but I recommend it to time travel buffs and those who enjoy Du Maurier's style. The book takes place in Cornwall, England in 1969 and the 14th century. I was fascinated by Du Maurier's descriptions of the landscape and surroundings in each century as the main character travelled back and forth. The story line starts out interesting, but frankly not much really happens. There is a lot of intrigue and none of it ever gets wrapped up. I was a bit bogged down by names and roles of many of the 14th century characters, but a family tree in the beginning of the book was very helpful. The story is light, and besides the 14th century names, it is a fast read. I would say it is a good vacation read for someone going to Cornwall, or a reader who just enjoys a little old fashioned time travel.

I opened the first chapter and wow! a science fiction time travel that asked for my attention every minute until it finished.
It was opened directly to the sensation after drinking the experiment drug which can bring you back into the long forgotten past. The past I am talking here was not in the time span of the narrator, but outreached 600 years, digging from the DNA memory of his ancestors which built his now. The theory of survival. This is not some Einsten Relativity story, where mind and body could be transferred along the time dimension, but it was only a loop of mind travel in which could do nothing to alter the past.

The writing style is the trademark of Du Maurier, with clues, subtleties and irony turn of events whose importance sometimes escape from the first time reading although the sentences themselves are effective but still have the literary beauty. She dared to explore the possibilities and left no stone unturned. The selection of past time itself can raise a debate to whether it was a pure past or already meddled with personal infliction. However, the introduction chapter (warning: read this AFTER you finished the book) by other famous author gave some light to the background circumstances.

The ending is quite open to give the reader freedom of thought, to imagine the meaning of it, whether it was all over, in the real meaning, of both worlds or just for one, or better yet, if an 'alter' ego gone, will the other follow ... or was it 'alter' ego anyway?

This book is the haunting (and at times horrifying) tale of a man who experiments with hallucinogenic drugs and finds himself experiencing another world, one that existed in the fourteenth century. "The House on the Strand" describes not only his experiences in the other world, but how he faces this new reality in his daily life. This is a very unusual book, but it is terrifically interesting and pulls you quickly in as it moves from fairy tale to psychological drama. It is different from anything else written by Daphne Du Maurier, but it might be her best work.