The House on the Strand
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Book Type: Paperback
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 ... )
