This unusual novel of the supernatural will take you back to Du Maurier's beloved Cornwell. But, then the supernatural is nothing new to her, particularly in her short stories. It you take the plot for what it is you may overlook any shortfalls in the novel. While not one of her better efforts, it reinforces much of her view of Cornwell and does have its own entertainment value.
Revisited this after having read it sometime in the 1970's and enjoyed it just as much despite having thousands more reads to compare it to now in the 2020's. If you let your disbelief go and take don't question the basic premise too closely, it will provide hours of pleasurable escape. The copy I have has a map of the general area which was pretty helpful. It also contains a family tree showing the relationships of the people in the 1300's, although it does omit a few key characters who were not "noble" enough to be included. Both timelines are interesting.
After fighting my way through Rebecca, this author wasn't on the top of my 'must-read' list. But for whatever reason I tried The House on the Strand, I am grateful. An interesting story well told that wraps you up and carries you along.
After fighting my way through Rebecca, this author wasn't on the top of my 'must-read' list. But for whatever reason I tried The House on the Strand, I am grateful. An interesting story well told that wraps you up and carries you along.
Unsatisfying attempt to blend 1960s psychedelic drug culture with immersion in a convoluted family drama of Cornwall's medieval past.
On one hand, I can understand what inspired du Maurier to write this: she was intrigued by the history of Kilmarth, a house on the Cornish coast where she had been forced to move to after being evicted from her beloved Menabilly (the inspiration for Rebecca's Manderley). She took her own obsession with the past occupants of the house, and her own mixed feelings about being the present-day occupant, and translated them into a story of dangerous and addictive time travel by chemical means, by a man whose disappointments in his personal life make the past seem much more attractive than his present.
So far, so good, and there are a couple of things I like about The House on the Strand: I love the (often repeated) idea that time-traveller Dick Young is the ghost, when he travels to Kilmarth's past, and that some of the people from that past are almost, fleetingly aware of his presence as he visits, tags along with them, and eavesdrops on their doings. And those doings are interesting enough, you can see why the plotting and the sometimes fatal machinations of the intertwined and inter-married local gentry of the manor houses that surrounded Kilmarth, would have seemed like a good story.
BUT, on the other hand, I have no idea what story du Maurier thought she was telling by offsetting the complicated family history, and possible dark deeds, of the Champernounes, the Carminowes and the Bodrugans, with the rather sad sexual confusion, and unsatisfying personal life, of Dick Young. What does it mean? What is it for?
The events of the past never truly resonate in Dick's present, and Dick's yearnings to lose himself in the world of Roger the Steward, Lady Isolda and the dashing Otto Bodrugan never impact the events of the past. It's as if du Maurier, like Dick, is forbidden to touch the historical people she has discovered in her researches, that she has decided only to observe and report.
Which might have worked if the present-day story -- Dick's complicated relationship with his old school friend Magnus, his dubious marriage, the backstory of Magnus' own research into the time-travel drugs --had been more dynamic. Instead, the characters are like puppets at the mercy of the mysterious time-travel drug, and their own curious lack of motivation and agency. (Widowed Vita has married Dick without much thought, it seems, whether he'll make a good husband or step-father to her two sons. This involves putting her two little boys in a British boarding school, and walking on eggshells while Dick sulks about the possibility that he might have to move to the USA to get a decent job and allow her to reunite with her children. Dick has married Vita in spite of his noticeable lack of enthusiasm for what marriage involves, and in spite of two children that "he could do without" ... And that's just for starters: a major character -- slight SPOILER here -- is basically thrown away, killed by a decision that has no good explanation, and has no satisfactory impact on the plot ... )
On one hand, I can understand what inspired du Maurier to write this: she was intrigued by the history of Kilmarth, a house on the Cornish coast where she had been forced to move to after being evicted from her beloved Menabilly (the inspiration for Rebecca's Manderley). She took her own obsession with the past occupants of the house, and her own mixed feelings about being the present-day occupant, and translated them into a story of dangerous and addictive time travel by chemical means, by a man whose disappointments in his personal life make the past seem much more attractive than his present.
So far, so good, and there are a couple of things I like about The House on the Strand: I love the (often repeated) idea that time-traveller Dick Young is the ghost, when he travels to Kilmarth's past, and that some of the people from that past are almost, fleetingly aware of his presence as he visits, tags along with them, and eavesdrops on their doings. And those doings are interesting enough, you can see why the plotting and the sometimes fatal machinations of the intertwined and inter-married local gentry of the manor houses that surrounded Kilmarth, would have seemed like a good story.
BUT, on the other hand, I have no idea what story du Maurier thought she was telling by offsetting the complicated family history, and possible dark deeds, of the Champernounes, the Carminowes and the Bodrugans, with the rather sad sexual confusion, and unsatisfying personal life, of Dick Young. What does it mean? What is it for?
The events of the past never truly resonate in Dick's present, and Dick's yearnings to lose himself in the world of Roger the Steward, Lady Isolda and the dashing Otto Bodrugan never impact the events of the past. It's as if du Maurier, like Dick, is forbidden to touch the historical people she has discovered in her researches, that she has decided only to observe and report.
Which might have worked if the present-day story -- Dick's complicated relationship with his old school friend Magnus, his dubious marriage, the backstory of Magnus' own research into the time-travel drugs --had been more dynamic. Instead, the characters are like puppets at the mercy of the mysterious time-travel drug, and their own curious lack of motivation and agency. (Widowed Vita has married Dick without much thought, it seems, whether he'll make a good husband or step-father to her two sons. This involves putting her two little boys in a British boarding school, and walking on eggshells while Dick sulks about the possibility that he might have to move to the USA to get a decent job and allow her to reunite with her children. Dick has married Vita in spite of his noticeable lack of enthusiasm for what marriage involves, and in spite of two children that "he could do without" ... And that's just for starters: a major character -- slight SPOILER here -- is basically thrown away, killed by a decision that has no good explanation, and has no satisfactory impact on the plot ... )
A stunning story of two worlds existing side-by-side. On vacation at an ancient manor house, a young man takes an experimental drug that transports him 600 years into the past--while leaving his body in the present!
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.
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.
