The House on the Strand

Daphne du Maurier writes very deep books that masquerade as mystery/romances. No two are alike, and in this novel she steps into the world of time travel (or maybe she doesn’t). After all, have you ever read a du Maurier that didn’t pose more questions than it answered?

We are taken into the world of Richard Young, a man who has reached a crossroads in life and is contemplating what his next step is going to be. His best friend, Magnus, a bit of a mad scientist, has loaned Richard his home in Cornwall for vacation. Magnus is experimenting with a drug he has developed, and he is not above using Richard as his guinea pig to test its effects. Just as we have stepped into Richard’s world by opening this book, when Richard takes the show more drug he steps into another world as well, the world of 14th Century Cornwall and the previous owner of Magnus’ house, a squire named Roger.

To tell of Richard’s or Roger’s adventures would be to ruin the plot surprises, and this book if full of them. But some of the questions posed here are subtle but profound. Are we attached to the past through our genetic material? Do we have stored in our brains every memory of our ancestors, if we knew how to access them? What is the cost of addiction? Of escape into any reality that is not our own? What price does it cost us when we ignore our present lives to live in the past, the future, or just dreams? I find this quite relevant in view of how many people escape into virtual reality these days, but it could be as easy asked of those who bury themselves in books, I suppose.

I had read this book many years ago, but found it was mostly new to me after so many years. It was as good as I remembered and no doubt more meaningful to me this go around. Nice to end the year with an old friend. show less

Six-word review: Time traveler becomes addicted to past.

Extended review:

From the perspective of decades, du Maurier's 1969 novel about a secret drug that transports the user to a hypnotically attractive other world seems to be a cautionary comment on the tune-in-turn-on-drop-out culture of the 1960s.

I don't know enough about du Maurier and her social environment to know if she'd have been moved to deliver a warning about the seductive dangers of inhabiting an alternate life through the use of mind-altering substances. What is more likely, perhaps, is that the author was exploring once again the experience of a relatively innocent protagonist plunging into a life of someone else's creation and struggling to find his or her way in it. show more This is a theme I recall from both Rebecca and The Scapegoat, the only other two novels I've read by this author.

Unfortunately for me, I found the world of the novelist's creation even more disorienting than did her character, Richard Young. The fourteenth-century setting created by du Maurier and intermittently visited by the disembodied presence of her twentieth-century protagonist is fraught with unnecessary navigational difficulties. I'm always a little wary of a novel that includes a multigenerational family tree in its frontmatter. In the present case, I stuck a Post-it on the chart and referred to it many times, sometimes repeatedly in the course of reading a single page, and I still couldn't keep the characters straight. Not only are there two unusual three-syllable surnames beginning with C (Champernoune, Carminowe) and two important secondary characters beginning with O (Otto, Oliver), there are three Joannas and three Henrys. I'm afraid the amount of blurring caused by this much visual confusion detracted considerably from my enjoyment of the story.

It seems, indeed, that the author was a little confused herself at times. One clear entry in the genealogy, for instance, shows a family with a son named William and his two siblings. In the text we are told that the family consists of two boys and a girl; moreover, the younger two are referred to as William's brother and sister. And yet the chart shows the three as William, Elizabeth, and Katherine.

I also had some trouble tracking the geography and topology. In the immediate and historic vicinities we have Tywardreath, Treverran, Trenadlyn, Trevenna, Trelawn, Trefengy, Tregest, and Treesmill. So many of the comings and goings sounded just alike that I pretty much gave up trying to hold the locations and relationships in my head.

Further complicating the chronologic movements of Richard Young was the fact that different sensations accompanied his leaps in time--sometimes a smooth transition, sometimes a jarring and even sickening jolt--and I thought we were supposed to perceive or at least look for a pattern in these effects. If they had any significance, however, it was never explained, so I was paying attention to an element that was given emphasis without meaning.

And finally, the aspect that was probably the most unsettling to me was not spatial or temporal but emotional. Richard Young struck me as a pretty cold-blooded character. Despite his protestations of affection, he seemed to feel no particular warmth for his wife and not much for his two stepsons. He clearly disliked his wife's best friends. And he didn't even seem to have much of a reaction to the loss of an important relationship; his main concerns seemed to be pragmatic. Consequently I found it hard to believe that his supposed romantic attachment to one of the fourteenth-century women was anything more than a one-sided physical attraction to a woman whose chief allure was unattainability.

In sum, what promised to be a suspenseful yarn featuring a trippy Jekyll-and-Hyde magic potion and depicting the sinister side of addictive hallucinogens was instead a sort of narrative muddle that led me on to a disappointingly unresolved ending. I usually enjoy time-travel tales, no matter how implausible, but this one was simply unsatisfying. show less

Set in the atmospheric landscape of Cornwall, "The House on the Strand" concerns a young man's experiments with hallucinogenic drugs and resulting "time travel" back to mysterious characters and events in the 14th century. Set in the 1960's, our protagonist, Dick Young, becomes increasingly drawn (perhaps "addicted" might be more accurate) to the past, which he finds far more interesting than his current life with his wife Vita and young stepsons. Daphne du Maurier, a skilled hand at suspense, has crafted a compelling story with keen psychological insights. The characters are well-developed, particularly Dick and Vita, whose banter and interactions realistically reflect martial tension and conflict. I will confess that I generally found show more the chapters concerning the 14th century events quite baffling in their complexity, and the numerous similar-sounding characters and place names equally exasperating. Consequently, I merely skimmed those sections; but Dick's subsequent recaps in the present day adequately summarize all the reader needs to know. The open-ended surprise twist perfectly caps the tale. show less

An interesting plot, well-written but for some reason the narrator didn't ring true to me. Something about his narrative seemed feminine and I had to keep reminding myself that it was a man speaking. It also seemed a bit unbelievable that he didn't seem to worry about the risks he was taking wandering about with no awareness of the present-day conditions - even after his friend is killed and he is almost killed himself!

I did appreciate the deliberate ambiguity of the ending - we are left to decide for ourselves whether Dick has been time-travelling or just hallucinating.

This late Du Maurier novel is a weird time travelling/hallucinogenic fantasy mixed with a local guide and history to Cornwall and the story of a 1970s modern marriage. Strangely enough it doesn’t really work. Dick, the protagonist, is transported into an apparently compelling drama from the Middle Ages through the consumption of a strange potion. But the characters are so underdrawn and underwhelming and the world making so implausible, that it is impossible to understand that he would throw away everything for the sake of this new, old world. And if that fails, the whole book becomes an implausible mess. Disappointing from a compelling writer.

Time travel and the 14th Century…what more can one want in a book? OK, a lot more, but let’s go with these two as the starter for this one.

Richard Young is staying at his friend Magnus Lane’s home in the English countryside. Magnus is a chemical researcher at the University of London and has concocted a drink, that when taken, will transport a person to the 14th Century. The one catch is that the traveler cannot touch any person while on the trip or they will be instantly hurled back to the present rather painfully. Richard, while waiting for his wife and step-sons to arrive, agrees to take the potion and report back to Magnus with the results. The potion has the same affect on Richard as Magnus and they compare their trips to the show more past observing the daily lives of the people who used to live in the same area where Magnus’s house is. Richard becomes fascinated with the past so much so that he keeps returning to see one particular woman that he has become obsessed with. His sense of reality takes a turn and he starts to have trouble deciphering the past and the present which frightens him but not enough to stop him from taking what is left of the potion like some madman believing he can change the outcome of the past. The results of his actions make the present a terrifying place for both Richard and his family.

Time travel in books can sometimes go bad but Du Maurier does something that makes it work --- she makes it unbelievable. That might sound odd but stick with me. For a good portion of the book, Richard isn’t sure what he’s seeing and he isn’t sure he should believe it. When he starts to believe, things go off track in his life making him wonder if what he thinks he believes is true. Even when some historical research proves that the people he saw and observed on his trips were real, he still isn’t sure what to think or believe. Life becomes difficult for him on so many levels and it seems as if you’re watching a man on the brink of madness. How Du Maurier does this is fascinating and makes the whole idea of time travel so fantastical and terrifying at the same time.

Richard was not a person I liked at first. I didn’t dislike him either but he’s a selfish person and one who doesn’t seem to think, or care, much for his family which is truly annoying. Magnus however was a character I would have liked more of. His ambiguity makes it work though because you get back to the idea of Richard slowly falling into the depths of madness without Magnus around.

There is so much to like about this book. The fantasy element is done well, and even though you’re not sure if it truly exists outside of Richard’s mind, it works and is believable. There are rules and consequences to the time travel and I like that. A free system wouldn’t work here and Du Maurier creates a system that fits perfectly within the confines of the story. The characters all have some sort of flaw that makes even the annoying ones likable, to a degree. You do in the end sympathize with everyone which I wasn’t prepared to do half way through the book.

I will be adding more of Du Maurier’s books to my list. Her writing is wonderfully descriptive and at the same time sparse, as if she’s giving you time to ingest it all. show less

Warning: This review contains spoilers

****

Professor Magnus Lane has developed an unusual drug that he wants his friend Richard Young to test. The drug seems to transport the user back in time to the 14th century. The user's location is the same, but all around him are the sights and sounds of six hundred years previous. However, as tempting as these sights and sounds are, any attempt to touch or interact with the 14th-century world will send him directly back to the present. The book follows Richard as he becomes steadily more immersed in the world of the past, which seems so much more vivid and interesting than his present.

I really enjoyed this story. The Cornish setting was a definite plus, with the bays, cliffs and rolling hills, and show more the romantic-sounding place names. (There were even a few mentions of Cornish pasties, which never go amiss with me.) I liked the twist on time travel and the clashes between the past and the present, although the summary on the back was slightly misleading; when it said "Richard eventually finds emotional refuge with a beautiful woman of the past trapped in a loveless marriage, but when he attempts to intervene on her behalf the results are brutally terrifying for the present," it made it sound like Richard would end up not being born or averting WW2 or something. The outcome is not nearly so momentous. Even so, though, the ending is a good one, nice and suspenseful while still resolving the story.

Recommended if you like Cornwall, history or have ever dreamed of travelling back in time. show less