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A Dark-Adapted Eye

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Since her first novel, A DARK-ADAPTED EYE, Barbara Vine has written several superb psychological thrillers. A FATAL INVERSION, THE HOUSE OF STAIRS, ANNA'S BOOK, and THE BRIMSTONE WEDDING in particular are exceptional suspense novels. But not one of them comes even close to A DARK-ADAPTED EYE which, after more than a decade, is still the best Rendell/Vine novel to date.

What drove Vera Hillyard to brutally murder her younger sister Eden? The answer turns out to be far more complex than the question. Wryly narrated by their niece, Faith Severn, this flat-out brilliant story brings to light a hidden world of love, lust, greed, and pain. Vine's characters aren't just well-developed; they are completely real and totally convincing. What distinguishes A DARK-ADAPTED EYE from Rendell/Vine's other novels is that aside from the usual intricate plotting and realistic sense of place, the conclusion is gut-wrenchingly emotional. As the inevitable tragedy approaches, the suspense escalates to a fevered pitch, and the final climax manages to be riveting and deeply moving. More than any of her other books, A DARK-ADAPTED EYE shows that the mystery genre is not at all inferior to serious fiction; on the contrary, the mystery genre at its best delivers the best that the literary world can offer.

This is one of the most sophisticated mysteries in years, and intitated a whole series of superior psychological novels from Ruth Rendell under the nom de plume Barbara Vine. The work begins with the sensational headline-grabbing state hanging of Vera Hillyard; the rest of the work is preoccupied with why she was executed and whom she murdered. Although Vera's victim becomes apparent earlier than halfway through the book, the whys of murder are much more intriguing: indeed, the novel purposefully begins with a knotted web of familial Hillyard relations for the reader to enjoy sorting through until it all makes sense.

The tale Vine has to relate is a complex one, extraordinarily deftly told: one has only to see the well-meant expensive botch made of it on British television to see how extraordinarily subtle Vine's art is here. The sense of wartime and postwar atmosphere is marvelously evoked, and the particular attention given here to WWII makeup and glamor (a favorite preoccupation of Barbara Vine's) is an especially intriguing and enjoyable detail.

I guess I will be the one who appears to disagree with the majority of reviewers of this book. I will agree with the fact that the story is well written and laid out very well by Vine (Rendell). As a work of literature this is definitely a good book. I however, selected this book because it won an Edgar Award for best mystery and had those expectations. The book moves very slowly. I put it down countless times and read other books in the process. I picked it back up because of the wonderful reviews I had seen on Amazon. (I had not read anything by Ruth Rendell or Barbara Vine to compare the style of this book to her other books. According to a note in the back of the book when Rendell writes as Vine, she writes in an entirely different style.) In the end, I wasn't satisfied as a lover of mysteries with the pace or the outcome of the book.

So if you are looking for a fast paced mystery novel then this is not for you. If your expectation is that of a piece of literature that well depicts a society family in 1940s England, and the dysfunctional nature that they try to conceal and how it affects their lives both then and into the present, then this will not disappoint. Just don't expect this book to go quickly.

Although I had already seen the PBS mini-series version of this book and knew the outcome, it was worth reading - how many books can you say that about? Very subtle with many twists - very enjoyable to read.

A real stunner! Admit I was frustrated by the book's almost inscrutable opening chapters and Vine's apparent modus aperandi of the narrator's conversational references to events and characters that have yet to be properly introduced -- I took to underlining names for future refernce like a lit-student -- and I almost gave up around chapter 4, but I stuck with it and was rewarded with a compulsive page-turner dense with Vine's abundant detail and methodical character development.

Literature of a high order, the novel is both a period evocation of life in the English countryside during WWII and a relentlessly detailed collection of character studies. There's been a murder; all that the reader is certain of throughout is Who the Murderer was, and only through the painstaking recreation of the lives involved is mystery set to rest.

Note must be made of the stunning conclusion. Has the requisite 'summing up' ever been so emotionally resonant as in these amazing paragraphs that crown Vine's dark symphony, as one after another that tangled myriad of characters weigh in with their answer to the Riddle, Who Was It?, in sentences that succeed and layer each upon the last in a dizzying, thunderous final chord? The family that Faith reconstructs through her memories, a tattered and shoddy remnant of British class society, has been the whole point of this disturbing, moving murder mystery.

The plot of this book is too complex to be revealed. But once you have finished reading this novel, you'll wonder at how anyone could have pulled it off. And Ruth Rendell does, beautifully. I love Ruth Rendell. She is irreplaceable. Even her weakest novels are worth reading, and when she's on. . .well, there's nobody who can compare. This book is one of her strangest and most perfectly written. I read it years ago, and haven't forgotten one detail. Read this book and be amazed at the spell a writer can cast!

This is one a kind books that haunted my mind long after my first reading back in the late 80s. It is also one of the very few books that I have actually reread years later and found it even more interesting the second time around. Plenty of other first rate authors out there--Lee Child, PD James, Reginald Hill, John MacDonald, Donna Leon, Robert Parker, Dick Francis, etc--but only very few whose works have worn well through time. Much less required a second reading.
No need to rehash the plot for Ms. Vine's opus as plenty of others have already done so, however I need to give a nod to her marvellous ability to make these somewhat unsympathetic characters both interesting and fascinating. These characters could be anyone we encounter, so realistically are they portrayed. The nerrative itself should in theory have lost any suspense from the start, since we know from the beginning a great portion of the outcome, and yet by sheer imagination and talent Ms. Vine shrewdly pulls the reader ever tightly into her grasp so that we are actually racing through the end as all the "whys" are answered like rabbits being pulled out of a hat. Even more challenging is her ability of going back and forth from past events to present nerrative; instead of being disruptive Ms. Vine somehow ties these two strands together without ever losing a beat to increase the reader's interest.
It is not necessarily an easy book to start--a great number of characters are introduced in the first few chapters--nor is it a fast paced one; however, once we catch the rhythm of Ms. Vine's nerrative, we are drawn into a world where family love literally kills and destroys, and nothing will matter until we reach the end of our reading journey. Don't expect anything fast paced in the Harlan Coben fashion (not a slight to Mr. Coben). But do read it and savor every moment.

From the first sentence of "A Dark Adapted Eye," the reader is informed that someone important is about to die. By page six, we know that this person will be hanged by the neck until dead for a murder she committed. So, this extraordinary novel by Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine, is not a classic whodunit, rather a fascinating and complex psychological drama - a more suspenseful mystery than many of the best in which the perpetrator, or murderer, remains unknown until the conclusion.

Faith Severn nee Longley is our narrator, and I believe this is so because she is related in one way or another to all the novel's primary characters, and is of an age, and a position in her family, where her point of view is more objective than most could possibly be, under the circumstances. "A Dark Adapted Eye" is, above all, the riveting story of a middle class English family during the first half of the 20th century. Thirty years after the fact, Faith, with the assistance of an interested journalist, attempt to piece together the events leading up to a tragic murder which would have profound effects on the entire clan.

The Longley family was seemingly united, like many others, with it's temporary dysfunctional moments and happier gatherings and reunions. Faith, along with her parents, John and Vranni Longley lived just outside of London. John's twin sister, Vera Hillyard, was 32 years-old in 1939, and had been caring for their sister Eden, younger by fifteen years, since the girl was 14. The Longley parents were both dead. Vera had lived with her husband, a military man, in India and she come home when her father became ill. Her young son, Francis, had been farmed off to boarding school at age 7. Although they are sisters, Vera acted the mother to Eden and obviously adored her. Faith joined her aunts, and Francis, at their country home, Laurel Cottage, Great Sindon, East Anglia, for holidays. Other relatives, who played an important role in their lives, lived within a relatively close distance. Overall, they appeared to be a group of relatively contented human beings, related by blood and marriage. Yet even Faith, as a young girl, realized that many family stories, and other personal news and events of both little or great importance, were never discussed at home, nor with her aunts. They were all a closed-mouthed, secretive and repressed bunch of folks. The tragedy and drama that was to eventually unfold began during this time, right before WWII.

Ms Rendell/Vine quotes James Drevor from The Dictionary of Psychology on the front book leaf prior to the text, "Dark Adaptation: a condition of vision brought about progressively by remaining in complete darkness for a considerable period, and characterized by progressive increase in retinal sensitivity."

Ms. Vine is a marvel at creating her characters and developing them. Throughout the skillful narrative, it is remarkable to watch individuals change and grow; to observe how they interact with each other and impact each other's lives. The author builds tension from the beginning of her intricate story, and it increases in intensity, almost non-stop, until the book's conclusion. A sinister air permeates parts of the novel when certain characters are front and center, and then lightens-up considerably when others appear on the scene. This deep psychological study, and the manipulative behavior described, are outstanding. It is obvious why the author won The 1986 Edgar Award for her achievements here. Truly exceptional fiction!
JANA

If not for sexism and genre-snobbery, Ruth Rendell, alias Barbara Vine, would be recognized as one of the greatest living writers, and this book is her masterpiece. Vera Hillyard undoubtedly committed a murder and was duly hanged for it. More than thirty years later, Daniel Stewart, a writer researching a "re-examination" of the case, approaches Vera's niece, Faith. In helping Stewart, Faith is drawn back into the past. It is Faith who has the "dark-adapted eye" and can see murky things in the past (both about society and about her own family) that her modern-day grown children can't begin to comprehend. The book is replete with symbolism and secrets: secrets springing from the repressed sexual mores of the forties and fifties, touching on homosexuality, illegitimacy, adultery, and supposedly virgin brides. The richness and complexity of the narrative, the bell-ringing realness of the emotions described, and the capture in amber of mid-twentieth century attitudes, make this a book to read over and over, and to recommend to everyone you know.

From the outset of this powerful psychological novel, the reader knows that someone is going to be executed--in this case, Vera Longley Hillyard, the aunt of speaker Faith Longley Severn. Vera has been found guilty of murder, but this novel, unlike traditional mysteries, does not reveal who the victim is or why the murder has occurred until the end of the novel. Nearly a third of a century has elapsed since Vera's hanging, and it is only at this point, when an investigative reporter approaches members of Vera's family for information for a book, that Faith and the others in her family reveal the small bits of information they have separately kept to themselves for dozens of years.

Set in the middle of the twentieth century, the novel focuses on the lives of the seemingly close Longley family. Faith's father and Vera were twins, and Vera took care of their much younger sister Eden when Eden was a teenager. Though Vera eventually married a soldier and followed him to India, she and her son returned to Laurel Cottage, the family home, to care for her father. There she had a "miracle baby," who could not have been her husband's. Eden, by then, was a young adult, a volunteer Wren during the war and no longer at home, but with Eden's marriage and return to the area of Great Sindon, she and Vera were drawn together once again.

Unexpected conflicts, tensions, jealousies, and resentments evolve through the story Faith tells about the family and through the family's letters, documents, and memories. Barbara Vine, a pen name for Ruth Rendell, is perceptive and realistic in recreating family tensions while keeping key information secret until the end. The mystery is particularly enhanced by the Faith's openness, a sharp contrast to the privacy of Vera. As the action moves back and forth from the present into the past and then into the earlier past, the reader fills in the gaps about life in this family, and as each character, more than thirty years later, now feels free to share hitherto private information, the horror, along with the reader's insights into the characters, grows inexorably.

In the end, the complete interactions of the family have been revealed, pieces of the mystery have been resolved, and Vera's life and the reasons for her crime and execution become clear. Vine's ability to manipulate the reader's own perceptions while creating psychologically believable characters, make this a powerful novel, full of suspense. n Mary Whipple