House on the Strand - Dark Publications

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Product Description
In this haunting tale, Daphne du Maurier takes a fresh approach to time travel. A secret experimental concoction, once imbibed, allows you to return to the fourteenth century. There is only one catch: if you happen to touch anyone while traveling in the past you will be thrust instantaneously to the present. Magnus Lane, a University of London chemical researcher, asks his friend Richard Young and Young's family to stay at Kilmarth, an ancient house set in the wilds near the Cornish coast. Here, Richard drinks a potion created by Magnus and finds himself at the same spot where he was moments earlier--though it is now the fourteenth century. The effects of the drink wear off after several hours, but it is wildly addictive, and Richard cannot resist traveling back and forth in time. Gradually growing more involved in the lives of the early Cornish manor lords and their ladies, he finds the presence of his wife and stepsons a hindrance to his new-found experience. 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. Echoing the great fantastic stories of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, The House on the Strand is a masterful yarn of history, romance, horror, and suspense that will grip the reader until the last surprising twist.

Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

New Twist on Time Travel December 5, 2004
20 out of 20 found this review helpful

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.

4 out of 5 stars

Compelling Tale of Addiction May 17, 2003
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars

years ahead of its time September 5, 2002
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars Don't miss a chance to read this book! May 20, 1998
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

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.

5 out of 5 stars A beautiful piece of fiction August 3, 2004
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

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.

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