Product Description

Dick Young is lent a house in Cornwall by his friend Professor Magnus Lane. During his stay he agrees to serve as a guinea pig for a new drug that Magnus has discovered in his biochemical researches. The effect of this drug is to transport Dick from the house at Kilmarth to the Cornwall of the 14th century. There, in the manor of Tywardreath, the domain of Sir Henry Champernoune, he witnesses intrigue, adultery and murder. As his time travelling increases, Dick resents more and more the days he must spend in the modern world, longing ever more fervently to get back into his world of centuries before ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7880 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
'du Maurier is a magician, a virtuouso. She can conjure up tragedy, horror, tension, suspense the ridiculous, the vain, the romantic' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

About the Author
Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) was born in London and educated at home and in Paris. Her beloved Cornwall, where she lived for most of her life, was the setting for her bestselling novels.

Customer Reviews

I think that this is one of Daphne Du Maurier's best works.
This is a fascinating story which focuses on Dick Young during a visit to a friend's house in Cornwall. His friend is a professor of science who has developed a drug which seems to take the user back in time. Dick experiments with the drug which interestingly seems to take the user only back to a specific time and place. He becomes enmeshed with the events of that time and place and finds that he gradually loses his sense of the reality of the present.

This is an extremely gripping and atmospheric book and if you like Daphne Du Maurier's books you really should read it.

Completely Absorbing
This is one of my favourite ever books. Its quite a while since I've read it now and I'm always meaning to read it again. It really is one of the best stories, and it draws you in so you feel like your experiencing it all yourself. I've even been to the parts of Cornwall mentioned in the book - just because of reading it. I definately think this her best book.

On a night like this ...
I opened the first chapter and wow! a science fiction time travel that asked for my attention every minute until it finished.
It was opened directly to the sensation after drinking the experiment drug which can bring you back into the long forgotten past. The past I am talking here was not in the time span of the narrator, but outreached 600 years, digging from the DNA memory of his ancestors which built his now. The theory of survival. This is not some Einsten Relativity story, where mind and body could be transferred along the time dimension, but it was only a loop of mind travel in which could do nothing to alter the past.

The writing style is the trademark of Du Maurier, with clues, subtleties and irony turn of events whose importance sometimes escape from the first time reading although the sentences themselves are effective but still have the literary beauty. She dared to explore the possibilities and left no stone unturned. The selection of past time itself can raise a debate to whether it was a pure past or already meddled with personal infliction. However, the introduction chapter (warning: read this AFTER you finished the book) by other famous author gave some light to the background circumstances.

The ending is quite open to give the reader freedom of thought, to imagine the meaning of it, whether it was all over, in the real meaning, of both worlds or just for one, or better yet, if an 'alter' ego gone, will the other follow ... or was it 'alter' ego anyway?