Dick Young and his old college chum (and biophysicist), Magnus Lane, are working on a potion that can send a person back in time. Their potion is in the planning stages and when we first meet Dick he has just tried to time-travel for the first time. His trip is successful and he finds himself in the 14th century. The travel itself is more mental than physical. While Dick's physical body stays in the 20th century it's his mind that is actively in the 14th century. This explains why Dick can walk, as if a ghost, thru the past undetected. Unhappy with his 20th century life - married to a woman with two boys from a previous relationship, Dick finds himself traveling back to the 14th century recklessly. It becomes an addiction to stay "connected" to the people of the time, particularly an attractive woman named Isolda. The story ends in tragedy, as it only could. Because it hasn't been researched properly, the drug gets the best of Dick and Magnus in the startling conclusion of House on the Strand. ( )

I read this many years ago but was pleasantly surprised to find how well it stood up, I thought, after all this time. Interesting story of a man who takes a drug developed by a friend; the effect of the drug is to take him back to the 14th century, where he can observe events without being seen. This world becomes more real to him than his own life, and he's annoyed when his wife and stepsons join him.

I’ve read these sorts of time traveling novels before, but this one was better than most. The detail of the lives of the people in the past were very compelling. In a footnote, it was said that du Maurier researched some actual people who had lived in her village in Cornwall and that is probably why it seemed more real than other books. As a matter of fact, I’m reading a new novel that takes place 20 years after Rebecca’s death and some of the same family names are appearing in that book as are used in this one.

The relationship that Richard has with the professor who created the drink is weird. The professor is gay, apparently, and Richard is very lately married to a widow with 2 boys. The professor has come up with an elixir that supposedly taps into brain chemistry that houses racial memory. I couldn’t quite figure out if it would work no matter where you were physically, or if like in another book, you needed to be in a place or near an object that was very old and you would go back to see it in former times. And to what time? That was unclear also. Why were the professor and Richard taken back to 1360 or so instead of 1720 or 1566? Was it the beginning of the town and the buildings life or what? Or was it arbitrary? If it was, why did they both go to the same time? Why did they witness different events? I don’t think that either of them were related to the people from the past, so why did they have memories of them? Very strange. But it was intriguing.

I couldn’t stand his wife. She was a pill. Of course he couldn’t explain his weird behavior and she immediately thought it was some other woman. Then she thought the professor had got him into something and she was still pissed even when he was killed (while wandering through the countryside in the other time, he was hit by a train) and left the house to Richard, she still held a grudge. I was happy when he broke with her and stayed in the house alone. But then he had run out of elixir. He had come to the end of certain events in the past and was satisfied, but then at the end, his hand got all wavery and he was going in and out of the other time (or so I conjecture) without the elixir. I kind of didn’t get if that’s what the last sentence was supposed to mean or not. ( )

Another one of my favourites from Du Maurier. ( )

"We are all bound, one to the other, through time and eternity". While vacationing at the Cornwall home of old chum Magnus, Richard Young is convinced to act as guinea pig for his friend's latest experiment - a drug that enables the mind to travel into the past - although the body stays in the present. Richard's "trips" take him to the 14C where he is soon so wrapped up in the past that it becomes as addictive to him as a drug - or is it the drug itself that is addictive? Are the lives of those in the past so much more important that his wife and step-sons become a hindrance to his journeys? Did these people really exist or do they only exist in Richard's mind? Although Richard's mind is in the 14C while on the drug, his body is not and as he walks in the footsteps of those in the past it leads him into some very close calls when his mind returns to the present. He could be standing anywhere - the middle of a road, on private property or in the path of an oncoming.......

Nope, I'm not telling and to say much more gives the whole thing away - half the fun is the guessing and unexpected twists in the story. Although the segments in the 14C were well written they were a bit confusing to me at times, but don't spend too much time trying to sort those relationships out. IMO they were mostly background and the main focus were the parts in the present day. Du Maurier is superb and understated as always, and this one will definitely leave you guessing all the way to the very last page and beyond. ( )