The House on the Strand

Richard Young, tired of his life as a publisher, bored with his wife Vita and his two stepsons, is staying in his scientist friend Magnus' house in Cornwall. Magnust has developed a new hallucinogenic drug which Richard tries. His trips on this drug take him back 600 years as invisible witness to lives more exciting than his own, whose fascination begins to have repercussions in the "real" world. Daphne du Maurier skilfully intertwines the lives of Richard in the present and Roger Kylmerth, his alter ego, in the past, so that two stories unfold simultaneously, both leading to separate, but related, deaths and disasters. Her description of the Parish of Tywardreath in Cornwall in the present and in the past possess an unforgettable vividness.