Well, "Rebecca" this aint!

Richard, in between jobs and trying to decide whether to remain in England or move to the US with his wife, spends the summer holiday in the childhood house of his friend Magnus. A Biophysicist, Magnus has been working on a new drug, which he persuades Richard to try on himself. Richard is taken 600 years in the past, following a steward called Roger and the intricacies of large families and politics with land etc.

The side effects of the trips become worse, and add to the already taught relationship with his wife, all the time becoming more addictive.

Live other reviewers I did find all the 1300 relationships a little confusing, but this was certainly a different book to read, and well worth the time!

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A difficult novel to persevere with. An inventive plot involving drug-induced time travel to Fourteenth Century Cornwall and the bored non-committed life of the main character. The medieval characters are particularly hard to visualise; until the major players are established, the poor reader is left floundering with a cast that is inter-related and not clearly distinguishable.
The premise of a time travelling drug is a topical one for its day (written 1969), but it is a dated one. Maybe du Maurier wrote better novels; this was the first one I had attempted.

I absolutely loved Rebecca, and I had very high hopes for this book, but it let me down on a couple of important fronts. And it is really too bad because it had tremendous potential.

In a nutshell, The House on the Strand is about a married man who uses a drug (developed by a scientist friend) that causes him to time travel. The story has two levels. One level is about the time travel itself, and there is a storyline revolving around some political turmoil in the early history of Britain. The other level is a story about the man's increasing addiction to the time travel drug and his increasing rejection of his wife and family in favor of the drug's use.

The latter storyline fascinated me. The former - - not so much.

The reason I am so negative on the book is threefold.

1. There is a fair amount of unnecessary description of places. And these descriptions are totally dull and do not add to the story in my mind. I mean how interesting is it to read about wanderings across a field. Not very.

2. The time travel portions involved a slew of minor characters that were confusing, hard to keep straight, and that really were not well developed. So every time the man time traveled, I really couldn't wait for him to get back to the modern day.

3. The end. I honestly have NO IDEA what happened at the end. Does anyone? I really didn't understand the last couple of pages. I think it had some implication or deeper meaning that I was obviously too stupid to interpret, but that DRIVES ME CRAZY. I just really need to know. Grrrrrr. It would have been a three star book, but because I didn't really "get" the end, I just had to subtract one more star.

I think du Maurier has tremendous talent, and she shows large flashes of it in this book when she evokes the dark, underhanded relationship between the protagonist and his wife. But, the rest of the book just didn't cut it for me. ( )

Daphne du Maurier writes very deep books that masquerade as mystery/romances. No two are alike, and in this novel she steps into the world of time travel (or maybe she doesn’t). After all, have you ever read a du Maurier that didn’t pose more questions than it answered?

We are taken into the world of Richard Young, a man who has reached a crossroads in life and is contemplating what his next step is going to be. His best friend, Magnus, a bit of a mad scientist, has loaned Richard his home in Cornwall for vacation. Magnus is experimenting with a drug he has developed, and he is not above using Richard as his guinea pig to test its effects. Just as we have stepped into Richard’s world by opening this book, when Richard takes the drug he steps into another world as well, the world of 14th Century Cornwall and the previous owner of Magnus’ house, a squire named Roger.

To tell of Richard’s or Roger’s adventures would be to ruin the plot surprises, and this book if full of them. But some of the questions posed here are subtle but profound. Are we attached to the past through our genetic material? Do we have stored in our brains every memory of our ancestors, if we knew how to access them? What is the cost of addiction? Of escape into any reality that is not our own? What price does it cost us when we ignore our present lives to live in the past, the future, or just dreams? I find this quite relevant in view of how many people escape into virtual reality these days, but it could be as easy asked of those who bury themselves in books, I suppose.

I had read this book many years ago, but found it was mostly new to me after so many years. It was as good as I remembered and no doubt more meaningful to me this go around. Nice to end the year with an old friend. ( )

Really surprised by how disappointed I was. Didn't care for the protagonist and knowing that half the characters were long dead and couldn't possibly affect the outcome in the present-day setting made the whole thing seem pointless. ( )