The House on the Strand is a lesser-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.
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