A Dark-Adapted Eye. Barbara Vine [Paperback]

Barbara Vine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2009

Like most families, they had their secrets ...And they hid them under a genteelly respectable veneer. No onlooker would guess that prim Vera Hillyard and her beautiful, adored younger sister, Eden, were locked in a dark and bitter combat over one of those secrets. England in the fifties was not kind to women who erred, so they had to use every means necessary to keep the truth hidden behind closed doors - even murder.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Compulsively readable... a carefully devised plot unfolded with the most cunning art. Wilkie Collins and Dickens would have admired it' Sunday Times 'Brilliantly plotted. Vine is not afraid to walk down the mean streets of the mind and can build up an almost tangible atmosphere of menace and unease' Daily Telegraph 'It is no secret that Barbara Vine is the distinguished crime writer Ruth Rendell and in A Dark-Adapted Eye we have Ms Rendell at the height of her powers. This is a rich, compelx and beautifully crafted novel, which combines excitement with psychological subtlety. I salute a deeply satisfying achievement' - P.D. James

About the Author

Barbara Vine is the pen-name of Ruth Rendell. She has written fourteen novels using this pseudonym, including A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon's Carpet which both won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award. All her books are available in Penguin. Ruth Rendell sits in the House of Lords as a Labour peer. She lives in Maida Vale, London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (October 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141040181
• ISBN-13: 978-0141040189
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #125,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but Rendell Can Do a Lot Better, March 14, 2011

By 

Olga Bezhanova (Edwardsville, IL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Dark-Adapted Eye (Kindle Edition)

As a faithful fan of Ruth Rendell I have mixed feelings about A DARK-ADAPTED EYE. Rendell is great at creating complex, many-dimensional characters, and in this novel this talent of hers is as evident as ever. You are not likely to forget sisters Vera and Eden and a complex relationship between them for a long time to come. What begins as a lovely relationship between sisters slowly transforms into the kind of hatred that can only be resolved through violence.

The novel is set in England during the 40ies, and Rendell demonstrates a very sophisticated knowledge of this era. A DARK-ADAPTED EYE is filled with fascinating details of life in the British countryside during World War II and in the post-war years. Unlike many other authors, Rendell never commits any mistakes in her depiction of this time period. Since Rendell was born in 1930, her narrator, Faith, seems to be an auto-biographic character, if not in terms of the crime she witnesses, then definitely in the sense of experiencing the same events as a child as Rendell did.

Still, A DARK-ADAPTED EYE is far from being Rendell's best novel. For one, it starts off very slowly. The first 60 pages or so of the novel could be dispensed with altogether. Rendell tries to offer us the entire family history of her characters but, in my opinion, she goes too far in this goal. Pages and pages are filled with names and snippets of stories of some obscure relatives of the main characters. By the time the real story begins, one feels completely lost in this mass of useless details.

There is another problem with this book that you need to be aware of before you buy it. There is no solution to the mystery at the end of the novel. You are left with a set of arguments that support both possibilities (I don't want to go into any more details here in order not to spoil the mystery for those who do decide to purchase the book.) Then, it's up to you to decide what you believe. If you enjoy such open-ended mysteries, you might like A DARK-ADAPTED EYE. If, however, you prefer to kinow what actually happened when you finish the book, this novel might not be for you.