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The House on the Strand

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 3,204 ratings · 339 reviews

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 p

Paperback, 312 pages

Published January 1st 2000 by University of Pennsylvania Press (first published 1969)

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The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

Best Books of 1969

23rd out of 32 books — 12 voters

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May 18, 2008 Elizabeth added it · review of another edition

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Carol Fullerton

Shelves: chocolate-club

An unusual DuMaurier in that it's a time-travel novel. I found it quite readable, but I could not make myself pay any attention to the complex relationships, housing arrangements and hierarchies of the 13th century characters--very odd, because I got the impression they were supposed to be so much more vivid and intense than the modern day characters. I had not before encountered the idea of time travel as an effect of inherited memory combined with hallucinogenic drugs... I liked the idea, it w...more

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Dec 10, 2007 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wonderfully eerie and entertaining book. I listened to an audio version that was really well produced. The musical interludes between each chapter actually heightened the spookiness.

This is DuMaurier at her best. Set in Cornwall (which, haven't been there, is a really good setting for spooky stories. Lots of craggy coasts, dense fog and and end-of-the-earth feeling) in the early 1960's (maybe the late 50's but I can't look at the title page for a date because this is an audio book), the story is...more

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Apr 12, 2009 Misfit rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"We are all bound, one to the other, through time and eternity"

While vacationing at the Cornwall home of old chum Magnus, Richard Young is convinced to act as guinea pig for his friend's latest experiment - a drug that enables the mind to travel into the past - although the body stays in the present. Richard's "trips" take him to the 14C where he is soon so wrapped up in the past that it becomes as addictive to him as a drug - or is it the drug itself that is addictive? Are the lives of those in...more

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Feb 24, 2010 Christine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: DuMaurier & history novel lovers

Recommended to Christine by: I read every DuMaurier book

This book is a wonderful time travel story.
When Daphne DuMaurier had to leave her home of 25 years, Menabilly close to Gribbin Head (the model for Manderley in "Rebecca") outside of Fowey, her husband signed a lease for another house close-by owned by the same Rashleigh family who owns Menabilly. So she moved to Kilmerth/Kilmarth shortly after her husband died (BTW her husband was Major Browning whose WW II quote "This was a Bridge too far" became famous and later even a book title).

In the basem...more

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Nov 05, 2010 Maureen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

this is a time-travel tale, daphne du maurier style. the first chapter could also be viewed as a perfect little short story, and shows all the power of the author at the top of her game. the thing about her books is in addition to her mastery of language, and pacing, and dialogue, she also tells stories that i can never anticipate. i didn't know what was going to happen -- i had no idea how the story would unfold from moment to moment. this is a very weird book and there's a lot going on underne...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Hannah marked it as did-not-finish · review of another edition

I feel like such a failure because I didn't finish this one, but honestly this book was so confusing and boring that after 125 mind numbing pages I knew I could not read 200 more.

Normally, I adore du Maurier, but she lost me with this one, and even the Cornish setting, the time travel plotline and the (still) beautiful writing couldn't salvage it for me this time around.

Oh well, I guess there had to be one of her books that I didn't like....but I still feel like a heretic...

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Oct 06, 2011 Goldenwattle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have always thought of Daphne Du Maurier as an historical writer, and although this book is set partly in the past, much of it is set in more recent times and could be classified as science fiction. It was quite different to what I expected her to write. But it is one of her later books.
The main character is Dick, and well…he’s well named. He’s a gullible, weak character, who acts like a naughty child who should have its hand tightly held and be supervised. I could not like him and wouldn’t bl...more

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Jun 22, 2012 Gaile rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, 14th-century, time-travel

This is a very strange book, quite unlike other time slip books I have read. Although there is romance in here, it is subtle and doesn't happen to the main character.
The main character, Dick is married to Vita who has two boys from a previous marriage. Dick is temporarily at loose ends, having resigned his job in London. Vita, an American wants him to get a job in New York which she has already arranged for. Dick, however, falls into a drug experiment with his childhood friend, Magnus. This drug...more

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Apr 28, 2008 Sarah Sammis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: released

Daphne du Maurier wrote great beginnings and great endings but sometimes she got lost in the middle as she did with The House on the Strand. This novel comes late in her writing career in 1969, just before her collection of short stories, Don't Look Now.

Coming on the heels of A Traveller in Time I couldn't help but see similarities between the two books. Here, though, the reason is science, not magic. Biophysicist Magnus Lane has created a serum that when ingested allows one to experience the p...more

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Dec 15, 2008 Liz rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Intriguing premise, but I'm not sure I totally loved it. The narrator agrees to take an experimental drug his friend has worked up, which induces a hallucination that's so vivid and compelling it's akin to time travel. As a reader, though, you wind up with a drug addict as protagonist, and he's a mundane, snippy loser. Plus it took me a while to get hooked on the secondary story line, the four-centuries-ago one. I didn't find it nearly as compelling as he did, so found myself getting very grumpy...more

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May 28, 2009 MAP rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, mystery, science-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 05, 2009 Penny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Really quite a dreadful novel, though a page turner as Daphne du Maurier books tend to be. Guy called Richard takes a vacation at his friend Magnus's house in Cornwall. Magnus is a biochemist who has created a new drug and convinces Richard to try it: the drug transports Richard back in time 600 years to be an unseen witness of events among the minor nobility in 14th century England.

Two stories unwind side by side, Richard in the present, and Cornwall in the 1300s. Both are a let-down. Richard...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Philip rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The House On The Strand by Daphne du Maurier presents a thoroughly engaging read around an intriguing story. It is a beautifully written and imaginatively constructed novel which is, in places, even thought-provoking.

Richard Young, a London-based publisher, is married to Vita, who is American. Say no more. They have two fast-growing children and plenty of the trappings of modernity, including a transatlantic lifestyle, and all the complexities of psyche that might provoke a male menopause. Richa...more The House On The Strand by Daphne du Maurier presents a thoroughly engaging read around an intriguing story. It is a beautifully written and imaginatively constructed novel which is, in places, even thought-provoking.

Richard Young, a London-based publisher, is married to Vita, who is American. Say no more. They have two fast-growing children and plenty of the trappings of modernity, including a transatlantic lifestyle, and all the complexities of psyche that might provoke a male menopause. Richard, you see, has grown not a little bored with the humdrum. His own little crisis requires him to take a break from the smoke, extricate himself from the perceived banality of professional life and make a visit to his friend, Magnus, who happens to live in Cornwall. Magnus is something of a caricature of the mad scientist recluse. His study is packed with sample bottles, containing a variety of goodies such as pickled animals, monkey’s heads and the like. Magnus, however, is also into “substances”: he not only uses them, but also invents them and tries them out!

Richard has a go with the latest concoction and finds himself transported back in time by some six centuries, to an era when there is intrigue and conflict in the land. The geographical setting remains the same, but it is only barely recognisable, since buildings have come and gone, features have changed and reclamation has moved the coastline.

Luckily, Richard remains invisible on his trip, but still he effectively becomes a participant in as yet unexplained events. There is a power struggle that goes right to the heart of the kingdom, and Richard is more than just intrigued to discover how things will play out. He takes an interest and, importantly, takes sides. Along the way, he becomes almost linked to the character of Roger Kylmerth, who died some centuries before Richard was born. So strong does the association become that Roger almost becomes Richard’s alter ego.

Though he has been warned about the drug’s experimental nature, Richard is drawn to repeated doses while Magnus is away in London. We feel that the scientist may even have set up this circumstance, where Richard is left alone with the drug, in order to test the invention’s power. Alone in the Cornwall cottage, past and present start to become blurred as Richard takes more than a passing interest in the fates of competing knights and maidens of medieval times.

And when Vita and the kids decide to visit, Richard is initially thrown. He suffers guilt alongside a possessiveness of his apparently private past, as if he has secrets to hide. His behaviour occasionally reduces to farce as he confuses his then and his now. Vita is convinced he has another woman on the go when she hears him discussing Isolda, a scheming wife from long ago.

But it seems that this need to revisit this discovered past, to revisit the hallucinatory drug that will take him there, is more than just compelling. Magnus, its inventor, has also become its slave, and Magnus’s eventual fate is determined by his own need to revisit his own experience of the past. Richard becomes involved in trying to identify what might have happened to his friend after he fails to turn up after a train journey. But, of course, he cannot reveal the full story to anyone until he has, himself, found Magnus. We await Richard’s own fate, perhaps knowing all along what it might be.

The novel entertains, enthrals, provokes just a little, but… why is there always a “but”? Well, there isn’t always one, but there is with The House On The Strand. The problem with Daphne du Maurier’s novel is the perspective of the narration itself. The story is told by Richard himself in the first person, but it’s also in the past tense. Throughout this pulls any punches of immediacy and requires a suspension of disbelief greater than that demanded by the most absurd opera. But if that leap can be made, Daphne du Maurier’s novel in more than worth the effort.
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Nov 19, 2012 Sandra rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Since I'd read "Rebecca", I was really looking forward to this.

This time-travel story moves between the present and medieval times in England. The male protagonist, who agrees to participate in using an experimental hallucinogenic drug, has little information about the drug itself but is propelled by curiosity. He is rapidly engaged with these past characters to the point where his present-time family becomes an annoyance.

The settings are gorgeously rendered and I felt as though I was there with...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Stefanie Price rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd never read any D.du.M, although she's long been on my 'list'. 'Rebecca' and 'Jamaica Inn' are books that I've known will enrich my literary life, and at some point I really must get around to reading them. 'The House on the Strand', however, was a du Maurier that I had never heard of, and was thrust upon me via my bookgroup.

Within about 20 pages I knew that I'd fallen for du Maurier's prose, which describes the rolling pastoral landscapes of Cornwall with the passion of somebody who really...more I'd never read any D.du.M, although she's long been on my 'list'. 'Rebecca' and 'Jamaica Inn' are books that I've known will enrich my literary life, and at some point I really must get around to reading them. 'The House on the Strand', however, was a du Maurier that I had never heard of, and was thrust upon me via my bookgroup.

Within about 20 pages I knew that I'd fallen for du Maurier's prose, which describes the rolling pastoral landscapes of Cornwall with the passion of somebody who really knows and loves a place. The characters are less lovingly described, although this does not detract from the momentum of the story. Instead it brings a complexity to the narrative. The many layers and complications of individual personalities, flawed and faulty, but nonetheless real. Relationships are key to the plot, and our protagonist Dick (who is a bit of a dick, in actuality) is swimming in difficult relationships - his american wife, Vita and her sons from a previous marriange, and his oldest friend, Magnus. His life is simultaneously in a state of flux, with him recently quitting a job he hated, and in a rut, in an apparently loveless marriage and the expectations it brings with it.

Written in the psychadelic sixties by an elderly du Maurier, The House on the Strand explores the effects of psychadelic drugs - for the purposes of the story it makes time travel possible. Taking the imbiber back to the 14th century, like a ghost out of time, the body stays firmly put in the present day while the mind is free to roam. An observer's role only is afforded to the time traveller, though. Able to watch and listen, but not to interact with the world of centuries ago...it's interesting that our Dick becomes totally consumed with this world where he is completely impotent, in preference to the real world in which he is actually living. One could argue that his overbearing wife and her expectations of him make him feel emasculated and impotent - so his escapism is a way for him to engage (in a sense) with a simpler world.

Dick's sexuality is an ongoing theme and issue for him throughout the novel. His relationship with his outwardly homosexual friend is complicated, and while he maintains his heterosexuality, he is beguiled and fascinated by his friend. He drops his wife at a moment's notice and gets caught up in the charisma and excitement of Magnus's company, which he reflects, always leaves him feeling rather deflated afterwards. He sounds like a teenager with a crush, and perhaps having not addressed his sexual confusions at an earlier age, he is stuck in this teenage state. At one point he reflects on how he met Magnus, at a church service, both drawn in mutual admiration for a particularly angelic choir boy. Not the most hetero of admissions, although Dick hastily informs that of course he's not inclined in 'that way' towards choir boys (yeah, we all believe you, Dick). He certainly doesn't enjoy sex with his poor wife, who seems a very dejected and lonely figure in the novel. I really felt for Vita, and her sons, and did not feel that their demands were excessive in the least.

This is a compelling, eerie and original concept for a novel. I enjoyed every moment of it, although I must admit that at times I was a little lost by the characters of the 14th century Tywardreath, who's intertwining family lines and political trampling of each other can get a bit confusing at times. The family trees helped a little, but getting bogged down in this does interrupt the flow of the novel somewhat.

The ending is slightly flat, and annoying not all of the loose ends are tied up, but perhaps D.du.M wanted it that way. Perhaps ambiguity is the only way to finish such a book, rather than explaining away the whys and hows of time travel, and whether the drugs really sent Dick's brain back in time, or just sent him a bit mad. I'd like to think this is the way she intended it to be - leaving us guessing.

I'll certainly be reading du Maurier's other novels soon - I won't put them off any longer!(less)

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Aug 15, 2012 Ian Mapp rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. On this holiday, I sorted the books into the most difficult to read first.

How wrong i was on two counts. This is genius.

Written in 1969 by a pensioner it has a real lsd feel to it and the main character is such a misogynist and family hater, its hard not to be impressed.

Dick Yound is lent a house in Cornwall by his university friend, Magnus. Magnus has developed a drug that can take peopel back in time. The effects wear off eventually and leave the user where they have followed the characters.

Th...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It helps that I grew up very close to the locations featured in The House on the Strand, and perhaps that's one of the reasons for my particular fondness for this tale of love and longing.

The storyline weaves brilliantly between the twentieth and fourteenth centuries, with the hero, Dick Young, experiencing a grand passion for the unhappy Isolda, the enigmatic, medieval opposite of his mundane twentieth century wife, Vita.

I recently read Margaret Forster's biography of Dame du Maurier and noted...more

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Feb 26, 2012 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, mystery, sci-fi-fantasy, historical

In this book, one of her last, du Maurier expands on the theme of her first book,The Loving Spirit, that time cannot hold back love. In The Loving Spirit, it's intergenerational but, in this book, it's a man's addiction to a drug that allows him to be spectator on events in the far past and the struggle of his family to pull him back.
It's a book of the times and you can almost see it as a commentary on the times (published in 1968).

Soon after her husband, Major Browning, died the 99-year-lease...more

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Jul 09, 2010 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm a sucker for a time-travel novel. I read this one ages ago but just reread it for a book group. It's sort of dated but thinking about the hallucinogenic drug scene in retrospect makes the book's origins pretty clear. That and knowing that du Maurier was writing about her own house which she's already done some historical research on before she conceived this plot.
In the book Dick has quite his job with a London publisher and is resisting taking a job in New York arranged by the brother of hi...more

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Sep 01, 2009 Jon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So far I guess this is the du Maurier I've enjoyed the least, in spite of the fact that large sections of it are set very accurately in the 14th century, a period of great interest to me. The premise is preposterous: the 20th century narrator drinks a potion which transports him back in time. The mechanism of the time-travel is unimportant though--the questions of reality (is he really transported, or is he only hallucinating?) and of psychology (will the multiple trips, experiences, and their c...more So far I guess this is the du Maurier I've enjoyed the least, in spite of the fact that large sections of it are set very accurately in the 14th century, a period of great interest to me. The premise is preposterous: the 20th century narrator drinks a potion which transports him back in time. The mechanism of the time-travel is unimportant though--the questions of reality (is he really transported, or is he only hallucinating?) and of psychology (will the multiple trips, experiences, and their cumulative physical effects eventually drive him mad?) are the real subjects of the book. The 14th century portions involve three families that are so intermarried that their relationships would be completely incomprehensible without the family tree printed at the beginning. Even with the family tree it's very difficult for someone like me (not a guy with a large family) to keep the relationships straight. This aspect is needlessly complex as far as the plot goes, but it certainly adds to the thickness and the sense of solid reality in the historical segments, both of which weigh heavily in favor of actual experience rather than hallucination. (Other aspects weigh equally heavily on the other side.) There are also absolutely necessary maps on the end papers, without which I think the local geography would have been impossible to imagine. I had no idea how the story could possibly turn out--my expectations changed radically as the book went along, and even with two pages left I wasn't absolutely certain what would happen. Of all the possible solutions, I think du Maurier picked the best one, and she handled it very skillfully. But with all that, I was still left emotionally uninvolved. There was only one character who gradually became admirable, and none I could really identify with. And the first hundred pages were very hard work, with no apparent suspense or narrative drive. If I hadn't had enormous faith in du Maurier, I wouldn't have continued. As it is, I'm glad I finished it; but if it had been my first, I don't think I'd ever have read another.(less)

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Aug 17, 2012 Nenia Campbell rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: x-1960s

Hi, I'm ~~actor~~ writer ~~Troy McClure~~ Daphne du Maurier. You may remember me from such ~~films~~ novels as ~~Birds Gone Wild~~ The Birds and ~~My Husband's Other Wife Is A Psycho~~ Rebecca. I'm here to tell you about my exciting, lesser-known ~~film~~ novel, ~~Holy Time Travel, Batman!~~ The House on the Strand

Seriously, though, I was shocked when I discovered that Ms. du Maurier had written a science-fiction book. Isn't she a mystery author? Then again, P.D. James did it, and Children of Men remains one of the best po...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Kathleen Dixon rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: time-travel

I read every single Daphne du Maurier in my late teens & early twenties, loved them and bought copies of perhaps every one she wrote. I've been meaning ever since to re-read them, but you know what it's like - there are always so many new and exciting books to read! A friend of mine, however, was recently talking about this title, so I found it on my shelves.

Sadly, it wasn't what I remembered. One of the reasons for that may be because I've read a lot of time-travel books since and so it ha...more I read every single Daphne du Maurier in my late teens & early twenties, loved them and bought copies of perhaps every one she wrote. I've been meaning ever since to re-read them, but you know what it's like - there are always so many new and exciting books to read! A friend of mine, however, was recently talking about this title, so I found it on my shelves.

Sadly, it wasn't what I remembered. One of the reasons for that may be because I've read a lot of time-travel books since and so it has lost the impact it would have had on me way back then. I don't know . . . but I'm disappointed because I was expecting to love it.

Putting that aside and looking at it as if I'd never read it before, I find I am still disappointed. To begin, it took quite a few pages before I realised that the narrator's voice was male. Now, I guess that's fine for an author to write from the point of view of the other gender, but I was busy identifying with the narrator until suddenly "she" was whipped away from me because 'she' was a 'he'.

I remember reading a book by a New Zealand author - now, wait a minute and I'll find who it was . . . . . . . got it - The Transformation, and she (the author) told the story from three different people's viewpoints, 2 of whom were male and 1 female. She also narrated 2 of them in the 1st person and the other in the 3rd, so it was quite unusual. Nevertheless, there was no confusion (she might have used their names as chapter titles, or some other way to make things clear - I don't remember right now). The point is, that there wasn't confusion, but in this book I got a shock when I realised I'd been confused.

Perhaps, when this book was written, the actions of the narrator would have made it clear that it was male...? That's quite likely. And du Maurier's characters are rather stereotyped. I think that's what irritates me about the book - it's okay (in my mind) for historical characters to be bound by their gender roles of the time, but the 1960s isn't part of history yet for me and I feel the rise of feminist critique.

Can I put that aside? If I try, I still find myself disappointed. I just couldn't get involved with any of the people. The narrator finds himself caring more about the people of 600 years ago, but I didn't find them particularly interesting. Nor could I find their story compelling in any way. I didn't like the narrator either and couldn't get involved in his 'addiction'. A disappointment all round.(less)

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Sep 19, 2011 David Andrew Westwood rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

[review originally published in "Curiosities," Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 2002]

A time travel novel by Dame Daphne du Maurier? She’s the acknowledged mistress of romantic melodramas like Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, and the writer behind Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” but sf?

In 1969, desperate for something interesting to read, I headed for my father’s bookshelf. There I found du Maurier’s latest -- The House on the Strand. Despite initial reluctance I was soon happily treading the straw-strew...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Helen Kitson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Best known for her classic novel Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier wrote many fine novels and short stories during her career. First published in 1969, The House on the Strand is one of her later novels (Rebecca was published in 1938) and tells the story of Richard Young, who is staying in the Cornish house of his friend Magnus Lane, who has discovered a drug that seems to have the ability to send the taker of the drug back in time.

A grudgingly willing guinea pig, Richard agrees to test the drug while...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Susan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, 2011

Interesting idea for a story - a man takes a formula and travels back in time and witnesses some events taking place around the area he lives in. However, is the past time real, is he hallucinating or as events seem to be blending together, is he slowly loosing his mind?

Yeah, I thought that sounded like a compelling story, too. However, though quite a bit was good, I found the main character to be on the selfish side, treating his wife shabbily. On the other hand, the wife was a bit of a shrew,...more

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Sep 06, 2009 El rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: late20th-centurylit

In this later du Maurier story, Dick Young is given the opportunity to live in a friend's home. In return he serves a as a guinea pig to Magnus, a biochemist who has created a liquid that allows one to mentally travel back in time. Unable to interact with people in the past, Dick's experiences with time traveling become increasingly more exciting for him as he falls in love with a woman in the 14th century. Each time returning to his own time he is more and more confused and anxious, and his beh...more

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May 01, 2009 Lobstergirl rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Satanists

Recommended to Lobstergirl by: Helen Gurley Brown

Shelves: fiction

Richard, a somewhat unhappily married book publisher, is enticed by his best friend, homosexual biophysicist Magnus, to imbibe a potion that enables him to time travel from 20th century Cornwall to the exact same locations in 14th century Cornwall, where he encounters (but can't touch, speak to, or interact with) the local denizens. Richard rather rudely uses time travel to escape repeatedly from his American wife Vita (authors, please - don't ever succumb to the temptation to name a character V...more

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Dec 08, 2012 David Haws rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The ending doesn’t work well. Vita is seated toward the front of the plane, would notice that Richard didn’t get on, and would throw a fit until they let her off. Why is the doctor waiting for Richard at such an isolated location but near Kilmarth? Why doesn’t the doctor straight-jacket Richard as soon as he zones out? Why didn’t the doctor check the walking stick (at first, I thought that he had, replacing the potion with a placebo).

Richard always comes back at whatever geographic place he occu...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Arwen56 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: romanzi

Stasera sono immensamente triste. Sapete tutti come succede, no? Sebbene si sia intimamente consapevoli che una determinata cosa ineluttabilmente accadrà, benché non la si desideri e, al contrario, la si voglia evitare a tutti i costi, quando poi capita ti ritrovi comunque spiazzato. Il dolore, sia pur atteso, non ha un minor impatto solo perché già previsto. Così mi sento alla deriva, come un ciocco di legno continuamente spinto a riva dalle onde ma che, caparbiamente, cerca di tornare in mare...more Stasera sono immensamente triste. Sapete tutti come succede, no? Sebbene si sia intimamente consapevoli che una determinata cosa ineluttabilmente accadrà, benché non la si desideri e, al contrario, la si voglia evitare a tutti i costi, quando poi capita ti ritrovi comunque spiazzato. Il dolore, sia pur atteso, non ha un minor impatto solo perché già previsto. Così mi sento alla deriva, come un ciocco di legno continuamente spinto a riva dalle onde ma che, caparbiamente, cerca di tornare in mare aperto. Per affogarvi definitivamente.

Baricco ci ha ricordato durante la sua magnifica trasmissione televisiva del 1993, Il circolo Pickwick, che tanto tempo fa (era il 1845), in Inghilterra, alla stazione di Paddington per la precisione, “a chi saliva sul treno veniva consegnato un libro per distrarlo dal timore che spesso incuteva il nuovo mezzo di locomozione”. I passeggeri si concentravano sulle pagine invece di guardare fuori dai finestrini una realtà instabile e cangiante al pari di una bolla di sapone. Che altro potrei fare, dunque, io se non lo stesso? Ossia affidarmi alle parole scritte per distogliere lo sguardo e imparare a convivere col personale “treno” su cui mi trovo, mio malgrado, a viaggiare.

Capita, nella fattispecie, che stessi ultimamente ripercorrendo gli scritti di Daphne Du Maurier. E’ solo un caso ovviamente, ma sarà lei a darmi una mano.

Ho già parlato di Rebecca, la prima moglie e Rachele, il mio tormento. Bene, questo romanzo, La casa sull’estuario, è quello che di lei ho preferito. Resta sempre notevole e pressoché perfetta la tensione narrativa che la Du Maurier riesce a creare, ma qui ci sono anche dei valori aggiunti. Scema, ad esempio, sebbene non proprio sino al punto di scomparire, il tono melodrammatico e sentimentale delle precedenti prove narrative. L’attenzione permane comunque focalizzata sui rapporti “amorosi”, ma in modo meno esclusivo. Inoltre, la modalità scelta per raccontarci la storia è un evidente omaggio a Robert Louis Stevenson e al suo Lo strano caso del dottor Jekyll e del signor Hyde. Dico “evidente”, perché il progressivo evolversi dell’azione che la droga ha sui protagonisti dei due romanzi è praticamente identico. Anche gli scopi, solo apparentemente difformi, per cui la assumono conducono alla stessa radice di malessere.

A questo si aggiunga che la scrittura è fluente e di facile fruizione. Non è grande letteratura, come ho già scritto altrove. Ma è certamente un onesto e più che dignitoso narrare.
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Apr 02, 2013 Al rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dick Young, restless in an unsatisfactory marriage, takes some time, while his wife is away, to visit a friend's vacation house on the coast of England. He agrees to help the friend, a medical researcher, by testing on himself a substance which transports him 600 years back in time for short periods. Intrigued by the experience, Young is drawn to repeat the experiment, concealing from his wife both his disenchantment with her and his growing obsession with the past world and its inhabitants.
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About Daphne du Maurier

If Daphne du Maurier had written only Rebecca, she would still be one of the great shapers of popular culture and the modern imagination. Few writers have created more magical and mysterious places than Jamaica Inn and Manderley, buildings invested with a rich character that gives them a memorable life of their own.

In many ways the life of Daphne du Maurier resembles that of a fairy tale. Born int...more If Daphne du Maurier had written only Rebecca, she would still be one of the great shapers of popular culture and the modern imagination. Few writers have created more magical and mysterious places than Jamaica Inn and Manderley, buildings invested with a rich character that gives them a memorable life of their own.

In many ways the life of Daphne du Maurier resembles that of a fairy tale. Born into a family with a rich artistic and historical background, the daughter of a famous actor-manager, she was indulged as a child and grew up enjoying enormous freedom from financial and parental restraint. She spent her youth sailing boats, travelling on the Continent with friends, and writing stories. A prestigious publishing house accepted her first novel when she was in her early twenties, and its publication brought her not only fame but the attentions of a handsome soldier, Major (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Frederick Browning, who married her.

Her subsequent novels became bestsellers, earning her enormous wealth and fame. While Alfred Hitchcock's film based upon her novel proceeded to make her one of the best-known authors in the world, she enjoyed the life of a fairy princess in a mansion in Cornwall called Menabilly, which served as the model for Manderley in Rebecca.

Daphne du Maurier was obsessed with the past. She intensively researched the lives of Francis and Anthony Bacon, the history of Cornwall, the Regency period, and nineteenth-century France and England, Above all, however, she was obsessed with her own family history, which she chronicled in Gerald: a Portrait, a biography of her father; The du Mauriers, a study of her family which focused on her grandfather, George du Maurier, the novelist and illustrator for Punch; The Glassblowers, a novel based upon the lives of her du Maurier ancestors; and Growing Pains, an autobiography that ignores nearly 50 years of her life in favour of the joyful and more romantic period of her youth. Daphne du Maurier can best be understood in terms of her remarkable and paradoxical family, the ghosts which haunted her life and fiction.

While contemporary writers were dealing critically with such subjects as the war, alienation, religion, poverty, Marxism, psychology and art, and experimenting with new techniques such as the stream of consciousness, du Maurier produced 'old-fashioned' novels with straightforward narratives that appealed to a popular audience's love or fantasy, adventure, sexuality and mystery. At an early age, she recognised that her readership was comprised principally of women, and she cultivated their loyal following through several decades by embodying their desires and dreams in her novels and short stories.

In some of her novels, however, she went beyond the technique of the formulaic romance to achieve a powerful psychological realism reflecting her intense feelings about her father, and to a lesser degree, her mother. This vision, which underlies Julius, Rebecca and The Parasites, is that of an author overwhelmed by the memory of her father's commanding presence. In Julius and The Parasites, for example, she introduces the image or a domineering but deadly father and the daring subject of incest.

In Rebecca, on the other hand, du Maurier fuses psychological realism with a sophisticated version of the Cinderella story. The nameless heroine has been saved from a life of drudgery by marrying a handsome, wealthy aristocrat, but unlike the Prince in Cinderella, Maxim de Winter is old enough to be the narrator's father. The narrator thus must do battle with The Other Woman - the dead Rebecca and her witch-like surrogate, Mrs Danvers - to win the love of her husband and father-figure. The fantasy of this novel is fulfilled when Maxim confesses to the narrator that he never loved Rebecca; indeed, he hated her, a confession that allows the narrator to emerge triumphantly from the Oedipal triangle.

http://www.dumaurier.org/obituary.html (less)

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