O Espião do Passado (Biblioteca do Leitor Moderno #110) - The House on the Strand

Daphne du Maurier

Civilização Brasileira

1970

305 páginas

10h 10m

Português Brasileiro

[Wikipedia] The House on the Strand is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. First published in 1969 by Victor Gollancz] '-' Like many of du Maurier's novels, The House on the Strand has a supernatural element (though in this case, it can also be accounted as science fiction). It is concerned with the ability to mentally travel back in time and experience historical events at first hand - but not to influence them. It is set in and around Kilmarth (where Daphne du Maurier lived from 1967) near the Cornish village of Tywardreath, which in fact translates from the Cornish language as "House on the Strand".

The narrator, Dick Young, has been offered the use of Kilmarth, the house of his biophysicist friend Magnus Lane, in Cornwall. He also agrees to act as a guinea-pig for a drug Magnus has developed. On taking it for the first time, he finds that it enables him to enter into the landscape around him as it was during the early 14th century. He becomes drawn into the lives of the people he sees there, particularly Lady Isolda Carminowe, and he is soon addicted to the experience. Within the landscape Dick is compelled to follow Roger, steward to Sir Henry Champernoune, Lord of the Manor. Roger hides his enduring love for Isolda until the day he dies, and Dick comes to share this love. Each visit corresponds to a key moment in the story of Isolda and Roger. Each time Dick returns to real time he is more confused; throughout the experience he is unable to interact with Roger or Isolda. Any attempt to do so brings Dick crashing back to the present in a state of nauseous exhaustion. (The drug has other dangers in that following Roger means that Dick walks unaware through the modern landscape with all the danger that entails.) His wife, Vita, and stepsons join him in Cornwall and are worried by his bizarre behaviour....