When we start looking for eternity, we find it everywhere.
A strange, complex book, neither biography nor historical fiction, but rather a writer's impression of John Dee and his strange work. Dee, a 16th-century English alchemist, is perhaps best known for having been Queen Elizabeth's personal astrologer and before that for serving time in the Tower under Queen Mary under the suspicion of treason. Ackroyd's unusual account of Dee's life recounts these facts, as well as information about John Dee's impressive personal library, his work as a mathematician, as well as his later interest in the occult, which included seances aided by a crystal ball. It is the supernatural that dominates the novel, and creates a strong and mysterious connection between Dee's 16th century London and the city in the present day, where Matthew Palmer, "professional researcher", inherits a house that once belonged to Dee. John and Matthew's stories are told in parallel; as Dee's ambition spirals out of control and he becomes more and more entangled in experiments with the paranormal at the expense of real human relationships, Matthew investigates the strange history of the house and the disturbing events that took place there, from the 16th century all the way through until his father's residence in Dee's old house. Along with Matthew, we learn about Dee's recipe for creating a homunculus - a miniature creature that resembles a human, grown by means of alchemy and magic - and his theories on the existence of a mystical, underground London which has been concealed from human knowledge since the time of Atlantis. Both characters undergo a transformation; Matthew, who starts out as a reclusive but perfectly ordinary historian, taps into the dark side of his personality under the strange influence of the house and the ghosts that seem to inhabit it. John Dee, on the other hand, appears to re-live the story of Doctor Faustus, as his wife's death makes him realise the importance of genuine human connections and the folly of seeking knowledge purely for the sake of power and ambition. It is not altogether clear how, but the characters gradually develop an awareness of one another and even appear to communicate across space and time at the novel's conclusion.
This was not an easy read, nor a pleasant one at times. I found myself increasingly repelled by Matthew, who appears to devolve into a crazed, animalistic creature as the power of the house and Dee's work sucks him in. He urinates and defecates outdoors, kills a bird with his bare hands and has extremely brutal sex with a woman encountered on a nighttime walk. It is as if he is unwittingly tapping into the dark powers that Edward Kelley, Dee's evil accomplice, wanted to harness to create the homunculus. In parallel with Dee's change, Matthew also grows to realise the importance of human relationships as he reconciles with his estranged mother and lets go of the memory of his twisted father; when confronted with a vision of the homunculus, he rejects the dark impulses it represents.
As my dislike for Matthew grew, I found myself gradually warming to the character of John Dee. Initially haughty, proud and emotionally dead, he is truly transformed and sees the error of his ways. When his father dies, all he can think of is trying to tease out clues from him about a possible buried treasure; in contrast, when his wife lies dying as a result of Kelley's scheming and maybe even poison, Dee cares for her tenderly and admits that his immense library and hard-won knowledge is worthless when he faces the prospect of losing his lifelong companion. His inner change is reflected in two contrasting visions he experiences in the aftermath of the strange seances he and Kelley undertake. The first is an image of a world without love, which includes a bizarre and unsettling scene of the queen conducting a postmortem on John Dee's own body in front of him, taking it apart piece by piece in a travesty of a medical investigation and then hungrily consuming the raw flesh. The second is a scene set in an Eden-like garden which represents knowledge gleaned not from books and experiments but from nature and the study of mankind; there, his companion is his late wife, who advises him to stop his mad quest for power and ambition.
The House of Doctor Dee is a strange, convoluted book that flits between modern-day events and something that is certainly a version of what John Dee's life may have been, but definitely does not claim to be a historical account of the past. Compelling at times, tedious and repellent as others, it's not a novel I can form a definite positive or negative opinion about. It's definitely one that had me wondering at the author's sanity. I don't regret reading it, but I can't say I fully enjoyed it.
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