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The House on the Strand

The House on the Strand

List Price: $16.50
Your Price: $11.55
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very captivating & yes, very intriguing book
Review: I am a Daphne Du Maurier fan. Reading this book has confirmed that all over again. If you like intriguing books this is it. It takes you to 14th century and you become a part of the story. The characters are very distinct and each has it's own personalities. Roger with whom we travel 14th century is so powerful you can feel what he thinks. The author has made a excellent job of relating 14th century events and emotions to Dick's current life. The story stays with you for a long time , even after you have finished the book

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: New Twist on Time Travel
Review: 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.




Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Don't miss a chance to read this book!
Review: 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.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Interesting story but leaves a lot unanswered
Review: I really enjoyed The House on the Strand because Du Maurier made wonderful transitions between the 14th century and the present in the novel, and entwined these transitions with an interesting story line. From a scientific point of view, however, the author left a lot of things very vague in relation to the drug, possibly because it is a wild and imaginative idea to have a "time control" drug, but I would have preferred a little more detail. No one even mentions what this drug-weilding professor really researches throughout the novel. But, taking all into consideration, it was a very intersting book

Rating: 3 stars
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: 4 stars
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: 4 stars
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: 4 stars
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: 4 stars
Summary: captivating and compelling
Review: loved it! Great story with very rich charactors.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Spellbinding,Oh,if only it were true.
Review: My first copy, bought in 1968 was soon read to tatters.the unlikelyhood of such a potion making time jumps possible only whets the appetite for more of the good drs. adventures.The characters seem to become as old friends as their roles develop. Without a doubt my favorite work of fiction ever. J.D.Miller


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