The House on the Strand

Rating:
Summary: I guess I just didn't get it
Review: I was disappointed in this book, especially considering the favorable reviews posted here. The concept was intriguing, but the segments in which the narrator went back to the 1300's were incredibly boring. I simply did not care what was going on with those characters. Lord So-and-So was cheating on Lady Whoever, and on whose side was the Monk? It was impossible even to track the relationships. The only thing that kept me reading was the sub-plot set in the narrator's real life. The increasing tension between the narrator and his wife, and his increasing addiction to the time travel drug, were the only interesting aspects. And I found nothing exceptional about the ending or the last paragraph, as some reviewers had found. It was a real let-down. Worth reading? Maybe...but a low priority.

Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: I wasn't expecting to like this book - my reaction to all time-travel stories can be pretty much summed up in one word -
"blah". So I was surprised to find myself enjoying the book. Du Maurier's prose is as excellent as ever. Her characterization, especially of Dick, is for most part compelling, though I felt that some of the characters from the past were somewhat lacking in depth. (Roger, Isolda, and Otto, however, were all powerfully realised.) I found the plot sufficiently well designed to keep me interested, and I appreciated the way the writer seamlessly wove the past into the present, as well as Dick's struggle to comprehend it all. The story as a whole possesses surprising depth, and I recommend it, particularly to du Maurier fans.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Tale of Addiction
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Tale of Addiction
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful piece of fiction
Review: 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.


Rating:
Summary: The Finest Time Travel Ever
Review: This book is so wonderful that I have read it over and over yet still find something new about it every time. The blend of mid-20th century values and medieval mystery and murder is incredibly well handled, and the deftness with which Du Maurier weaves the two together is the finest artistry. The ending, of course, stops one's breath. This book is one of the all-time masterpieces, and anyone who hasn't read it should get out and BUY IT NOW!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Well-conceived and researched, flat characters
Review: Time travel in the company of a boring and fussy Brit twit protagonist is not a journey I'd sign up for again. Al Gore's word "snippy" was invented for this guy. The characters he shadows in the 14th century are equally dullish and two dimensional, plus who's betraying whom -- politically and maritally -- pales quickly. I read waiting for the twist (it is a nice ending!) and for the very thoroughly researched details of Cornwall now and six centuries ago. Unfortunately, one feels considerably more interest in the drug, that transporting liquid, than in anything else, not a good sign for a novel of really unrequited love. The final fifty pages fly past but getting to that point is as much of a slog as the time travelers moving through the cold marshes and estuaries of the past.