Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. It’s suspenseful and exciting and is also the reason I will likely never agree to be anyone’s second spouse. It’s been years since I read Rebecca on the recommendation of a trusted friend, but shamefully I’d never gotten around to reading du Maurier’s other work. I decided to rectify that recently, and the superb reviews of The House on the Strand convinced me it was the right place to turn. Sadly, while it has its charms, The House on the Strand is ultimately too strange, too off-putting, and too limited to be enjoyed anywhere near as much as Rebecca.
Dick Young is the protagonist. He’s an odd guy and hard to like. He’s spending the summer at his friend’s ancestral home in the British countryside while trying to decide what to do with his life. His new American wife wants him to move to New York and accept a job with her brother’s firm. Dick doesn’t seem to want to do much of anything. He’s not a particularly pleasant husband and he’s an indifferent stepfather.
Dick’s friend, the owner of the house, has been experimenting with a potion he claims has incredible effects. He asks Dick to sample it while at the house and let him know the results, being coy about the details to avoid coloring the experiment. What happens is utterly fantastical. Dick is somehow transported back in time to the 1300s, observing the local intrigue as lord and ladies and their servants plot for power and prestige. Dick is seemingly tethered to the occupant of his friend’s home at the time, a steward to a powerful lady. Dick is also incapable of interacting with the people or events he is observing, as doing so sends him retching and keening into the present.
Unfortunately, as a reader I didn’t feel anywhere near the fascination with life in the 1300s that Dick felt. It’s all just a bunch of people with funny names riding horses between each other’s palaces. As Dick gets deeper into his obsession with the past, his present-day life gets progressively worse. He mistreats and ignores his wife, making her suspicious and angry. He takes greater and greater amounts of the potion, at risk to his health and safety. Ultimately, after a tragedy, the novel limps to an anticlimactic finish.