Product Description

This novel centres on the famous 16th-century alchemist and astrologer John Dee. Reputedly a black magician, he was imprisoned by Queen Mary for allegedly attempting to kill her through sorcery. When Matthew Palmer inherits an old house in Clerkenwell, he feels that he has become part of its past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97644 in Books
• Published on: 1994-07-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages

About the Author
Novelist, biographer and poet Peter Ackroyd was born in London on 5 October 1949. He won the duplex Whitbread Novel prize and Guardian Fiction Prize for his novel Hawksmoor in 1988.

Customer Reviews

Possibly the best Peter Ackroyd novel
Having read all Peter Ackroyd's novels I believe this, along with English Music, to be his best. It captures a period of history and of London in that historical context, that Ackroyd knows so well, and mixes the history of the mystic John Dee with a contemporary story. Parts of the novel are truly frightening and if you live in old house, as I do, it will never quite seem the same place after reading this book.

Hornblower, Flashman, Sharpe, Gerard...Doctor Dee
The author would probably be horribly offended to be compared to historical novelists like C S Forester, but at the end of this novel, that was what I felt I'd read.

Ackroyd is brilliant at knocking out the prose of the past - the sixteenth-century tone of this is spot on - but when all's said and done, it still feels like a bit of schtick done in almost every book he's written.

What we have here is the usual Ackroyd formula of alternating narrators each chapter. The modern-day one goes through the plot feeling poetically ill, and dizzy, and hearing things, but not actually doing anything beyond reporting ghostly experiences in the alchemist's old house. He's there simply because the story requires things from the past to happen to someone - anyone - in the present, and he gets the short straw.

The main action is that set in the past, in which Doctor Dee is attempting to grow an immortal "homunculus", or artificial human, inside a glass tube. Given the past / present split and the two narrators, it seems fairly obvious who this eternal homunculus is going to turn out to be; so much so that the plot changes direction at the last moment, and more or less peters out, rather than resolving itself.

I'd love someone to tell me what this book is actually about. I've read it twice, perhaps three times over 15 years. It's isn't a bad book, nor is it ever boring; it's perhaps what Orwell called a "good bad book", meaning there's really nothing there but it still works as entertainment at least.

It's deeply atmospheric, and presents a cogent analysis of how an Elizabethan sage could possibly practise both mathematics and magic, and still somehow manage to hold both in equal intellectual regard. The thought one is left with seems simply to be that the present repeats and bleeds into the past; but really, if so - so what?

If you're new to Ackroyd, 'Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem' is a far better place to start - it's every bit as creepy and has a genuine murder mysery embedded in it, with a brilliant full-circle twist at the end. Doctor Dee, though, is "hardcore" Ackroyd, for the true devotee only.

Hugely Disappointing
This book was on my 'To Read' list for months and I was thoroughly looking forward to digging into it. I'd seen it on the list of 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die, and read a number of positive reviews. I'm happy to admit there must be SOMETHING positive about this novel, but I'm sorry to say I couldn't find it.

Above all this is just a thinly veiled map of London. We're treated to seemingly endless discriptions of London's streets throughout. Almost every single line in the book that isn't dialogue is a needlessly detailed description of some part of London. While some have seen this as praise worthy, for my part I was bored stiff. It's clear that Ackroyd loves London and knows plenty about it. However, if I'd wanted an account of every square foot of the UK's capital and how lovely it is, I'd consult a tourist guide.

On the rare occasions he's not furnishing us with dull accounts of geography Ackroyd displays no skill whatsoever for creating appealing characters or a gripping plot. The book switches between the modern day and our protagonist Matthew, and the Elizabethan era and the eponymous Dr. Dee. Matthew is as dull as dishwater, while Dee comes across as a moaning old git. Neither is very likeable and it becomes more and more of a chore to read Matthew's inspid guide to London (that allegedly passes for his internal monologue) on the one hand, and Dee's bitter self-aggrandizement on the other. Indeed the Dee character was the most disappointing part of the novel. He's arrogant, rude, unpleasant and shows nothing even approaching humanity. This would be bearable if it weren't for the fact that the other major character is just a mouthpiece for the author's pretentious waffling about what a smashing place London is.

The book falls between far too many stools. It's a half-interesting ghost story mixed with a not-very-interesting contemporary detective element, a painfully boring geography lecture and a guide to Elizabethan England provided by an Alf Garnett type character who's had his sense of humour surgically removed.

Overall it was a huge disappointment that found nearly impossible to finish.