To See a Stranger

by Margaret Lynn

Dorcas Mallory wakes up the day of her wedding to find out she is another woman in another place and time.

Genres: Gothic

200 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 1961

About the author

Pseudonym of Gladys Starkey Battye
Born in 1915, died around 1976.

Reviews

[Peacha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb gothic mystery about a young girl named Dorcas - sorry to anyone hampered with this clunker but Dorcas is a lousy heroine's name!- but fortunately it doesn't stick around because she falls asleep the night before her wedding and wakes up in the body of a forty year old woman named Lisa! Is she the victim of some reincarnation ghost hell bent on revenge or is something more sinister afoot? Dorcas/Lisa battles the knife edge of sanity as she's forced to play the part of a cold wife and mother while secretly attempting to find out what happened to Dorcas - who may or may not have been a real person. Can't tell you anymore needless to say it's well worth the read! only flaw is the dated behavior of her love interest who calls her an idiot in that I'm a superior male and I can say it as though it's totally fetching - totally not, but it was the the early 60s.

[Sally Elick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of this book is brilliant, how one person can become two or even three different characters due to memory loss/regain. I don't wish to give away more.

My favorite Egyptian movie, El-Leila El-Akheera or the Last Night, is based on this novel. I found while reading the book that I always pictured the cast of the movie as the main characters, particularly Faten Hamama as Lisa/Dorcas with her fragility and sensitivity, and Mahmoud Morsy as the brooding and menacing Charles. Dr. Broderick, however, is nothing like Ahmed Mazhar's Dr. Magdy. I frankly prefer the more gentle nature of Dr. Magdy, and sometimes find Broderick indifferent, provocative, and rude.
The story of the movie and the book has many similarities. The departure from the book in the movie to appropriate the story for Egyptian audience is actually much better. Kamal El-Sheikh and Youssef el-Sabe'ai together created a masterpiece.

Spoiler alert:
A woman wakes up to find herself in a strange house, dressed in strange clothes (to herself) with a different name and a family that is supposedly her own. The memory that she has is of a 20-year old young woman about to get married, named Dorcas Mallory. However, everything and everyone around her says that she is 40-year old Lisa Landry, a wife and a mother.
To explain the relationship between the two families: having Fawzya and Nadia as sisters makes more sense than having Charles and Adrian Mallory as step-brothers. The plot is more complicated in the movie because there are other characters like the seamstress who is involved in verifying Nadia's identity, and the hypnotist who helps Nadia/Fawzeya. The two peculiar rebellious servants, Miss Rose and Mrs. Hale, are unfortunately missing in the movie. At times, jumping to conclusions in the movie is just too much, but it made the events faster-paced than the novel.

The air raid in London during WWII becomes Portsaid air raid. The location of the previous dwelling of Charles and Lisa prior to the story in Canada is changed to Sudan in the movie. Faten Hamama is a stronger and more convincing Lisa/Dorcas. Chapter 1 and 2 are absolutely mesmerizing. I wish that the movie had focused on these details of Lisa looking in the mirror, the painting, the physical change, the clothes, etc. The movie got rid of Lisa becoming an alcoholic which was originally Charles' plan to rid of her. The heavy-smoking part remains in the movie.
I prefer the sleeping pills and fire staged by Charles in the book than Shaker's plot in the movie. There is more closure and satisfying ending in the book. The one in the movie is sad but very logical.
My favorite part is when Charles tells Dorcas how he moulded her, and how his own creation turned out to be so empty and hated by all. There is more to this.

Overall, I've enjoyed both works. I recommend them to whoever is fond of 60s mystery. Both are rare to find but I am happy that I managed to get them. I wish I could find anything about the author, Margaret Lynn, or more of her work.

Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Crime

[Adrian Griffiths · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young woman named Dorcas goes to sleep on the night before her wedding, but when she wakes up the next day, she is somewhere else, with no wedding, no groom, in fact everything in her life has completely changed. To say any more than that would spoil the story, and I am glad I read this completely spoiler-free, because the central mystery is really intriguing, and I was fully engaged in finding out how it could be explained.

The story structure is standard gothic genre, so a happy ending was expected, but Dorcas's total bewilderment at her predicament is handled very well, and for a long time no explanation seems possible. When it finally comes, it falls just on the right side of believability - thank goodness. My only disappointment was in the ending of the book, in which a climactic showdown happens while the heroine is "being rescued while unconscious" so she (and us, the reader) only hear what happened after it's all over. That would have been so much better if it had been written out in real time. Apart from that, a well constructed. story

[Serena · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a tragic story... definitely not what I expected. I was thinking maybe Dorcas Mallory was in a temporary body, in a temporary life to maybe learn a lesson or something and then at the very end she’d be back in her regular body and marry Russ and it’ll end happily... I’m upset it didn’t go that route. I so badly wished she and Russ ended up together, I almost feel betrayed such a cute couple was so cruelly torn apart by selfish circumstances. The ending also seemed very rushed and not up to par... for that reason alone, the rating got knocked down to a two. It also seemed very slow at parts. Hugh is nice and all but Russ was the superior lover. period. Though I’m upset with the outcome, I still liked it for what it was, not bad.

[Nattie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very twisty. I'm trying to come up with other words for twisty and twist, but I've got nothing so far.

I'm not a fan of the ending and was actually considering knocking off a star for it.