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Ruth Rendell

A Dark-Adapted Eye Paperback – October 1, 1993

by Ruth Rendell (Author), Barbara Vine (Pseudonym)

619 ratings

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"Dazzling...writing at her formidable best, Barbara Vine taps the poetry as well as the pain of her characters' clamorous declarations of their need for love." —New York Times Book Review

"When the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world launched a second byline, she actually stepped up her writing a level." —TIME

Faith Severn has grown up with the dark cloud of murder looming over her family. Her aunt Vera Hillyard, a rigidly respectable woman, was convicted and hanged for the crime, but the reason for her desperate deed died with her. Thirty years later, a probing journalist pushes Faith to look back to the day when her aunt took knife in hand and walked into a child's nursery. Through the eyes of a woman trying to understand an unspeakable, inexplicable family tragedy, Barbara Vine leads us through a shadow land of illicit lust, intimate sins, and unspoken passions—to a shattering and illuminating climax, as inevitable as it is unexpected. In this enthralling masterpiece, a great crime writer has achieved both a flawlessly crafted novel of psychological suspense and a deeply probing work of literary art.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Plume
Publication date

October 1, 1993
Dimensions

4.16 x 0.79 x 6.78 inches
ISBN-10

0452270642
ISBN-13

978-0452270640
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Writing under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell departs from her famous detective team of Wexford and Burden to tell a gripping tale of family madness. Vera Hillyard is a domineering and possessive woman who strives for obsessive control over a malicious older son, a youngest son who is--or isn't--illegitimate, and her younger sister, Eden, who secretly seeks to escape Vera's grasp and instead provokes a murder. This winner of the 1986 Edgar Award for best mystery novel belongs to the genre of old murders reconsidered and the question of who did what to whom and why is teasingly left unresolved.

Review

No other living mystery writer complains more openly about the burden of fans expecting her to bring back series characters when she has other pursuits in mind. In A Dark-Adopted Eye . . . Rendell does what Conan Doyle never could: proves she has something far greater to offer. -- Publishers Weekly

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Plume (October 1, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0452270642
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0452270640
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.16 x 0.79 x 6.78 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #315,353 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,573 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Books)
- #7,479 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #19,513 in Suspense Thrillers

Customer Reviews:
619 ratings

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Ruth Rendell

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Edgar Award–winning author Ruth Rendell (1930-2015) wrote more than seventy books and sold more than twenty million copies worldwide. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (London), she was the recipient of the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime Writers’ Association. Rendell’s award-winning novels include A Demon in My View (1976), A Dark-Adapted Eye (1987), and King Solomon’s Carpet (1991). Her popular crime stories featuring Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford were adapted into a long-running British television series (1987–2000) starring George Baker.

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2 star		8%
1 star		6%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Jessica

Ruth Rendell's Classic: A Dark Adapted Eye

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 14, 2015

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See this review and more at: http://idiosyncraticlibrary.com/?p=283

Ruth Rendell's most well know character is Chief Inspector Wexford, the lead detective in Sussex England and protagonist of over 20 books. While I am a huge Inspector Wexford fan, my favorite book is A Dark Adapted Eye, published under Ms. Rendell's pseudonym, Barbara Vine. Even the title is intriguing, referring to a eye that has adapted to darkness and can see in obscurity. The title promises darkness, obfuscation and the ability or lack thereof for characters to see the truth before them.

Secrets, denials and the long tentacles of events past is the main theme of A Dark Adapted Eye. Twenty some-odd years ago, just after the end of World War II, Vera Hillyard was hanged for the murder of her younger sister Eden. And although Vera and Eden's families try hard to act as if these events never occurred, the scars of the murder run deep within the entire family. Now, Daniel Stewart, a true crime writer opens those scars afresh when he contacts the narrator Faith Severn (Vera and Eden's niece) and several other family members and friends with the hope of writing a book about the murders from Vera's perspective. Faith now must consider the events of the past and decide whether she will help Daniel Stewart with his account of the murder.

Vera and Eden seem like the most unlikely people to be in the center of a murder plot when Faith first introduces readers to her aunts. Vera, over 15 years older than Eden, is more like an overly proud, doting mother to Eden than she is a sister. The two live together in Eden's childhood home in Colchester England. Vera is completely devoted to Eden, and together they live a genteel, fussy and often snobbish life of needlepoint, elaborate teas, and proper behavior. Although Vera is married, she and Eden spend most of their time alone in their quiet country retreat. Vera's husband is a officer in the British Army and is serving abroad. Vera's spiteful, unpleasant son, Francis, is away at boarding school and only comes home briefly to wreak havoc on the household. It is into this seemingly lovely, but quite strange household that Faith comes to stay during the Blitz.

Forever an outsider, Faith longs to be part of the sisterly closeness that Vera and Eden share, only to be treated like an annoying, ill behaved child. Vera, nervous, strict and often bitingly harsh to Faith, is disappointed in everything Faith does. Eden, glamorous and beautiful, is sweeter to Faith, but even she isn't above reprimanding Faith for her manners and upbringing. Even when her cousin Francis returns from boarding school, she finds no allies and discovers another conspirator's relationship between Eden and Francis. As the narrator, Faith's outsider status cloaks much of the early story in mystery and allows Ms. Vine to develop a slow reveal of facts and circumstances that leads this peaceful country idyll to murder.

As the war closes in on England, events being to shake the peaceful country home of Colchester. Eden leaves home to join a civilian-military support organization and Vera becomes pregnant (when her older son is nearly college aged) with a second child. The very closeness and devotion the two sisters share will wind them into conflict that will lead to Eden's murder.

Revealed as slowly and tantalizingly as a good burlesque show, Barbara Vine writes a dark and convincing tale about a family trying to patch together the facts that lead to murder. Facts and innuendo, events of the long past, secrets hidden, and collateral events not considered, the plot winds through each reveal. Turn and turn about, Vera moves effortlessly to jealous harpy murderer, to wronged victim, and, most satisfyingly, never fully settles into either role. Haunting, and beautifully written, A Dark Adapted Eye is rich enough to be a meaningful read, yet with a strong plot, carefully laid out to intrigue and surprise.

Ruth Rendell, (pen name Barbara Vine) is the author of over 50 novels. She passed away on May 2, 2015. Her work will be long remembered and her unique voice sadly missed.

2 people found this helpful

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Paula Attanucci

Poor print quality

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 8, 2022

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The text in this book is so tiny that it makes it very difficult to read.

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bookgal

Great Start and Terrific Right to the End

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 3, 2020

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Right from the beginning, author Barbara Vine (AKA Ruth Rendell) grabs your attention with a narrator discussing one of her relatives who was charged with murder and executed a number of years ago. And at first that is all you get about this long ago crime.

Then you are teased by small incidents that make you wonder: what happened 30 years ago and why? And in true thriller fashion, Vine slowly peels away the skin on the story, revealing the story until at the defining moment of the murder and how it came about.

And the way Vine does it is really clever: she introduces a true-crime writer interested in developing a book about Vera Hillyard's crime turns to her relatives and it is through her niece's conversations with her own relatives and her own reminisces that the reader is drawn into the strange and weird relationships of Severn's family, most especially her Hillyard and her sister Eden.

Faith grows up hearing bits and pieces about Vera and how she once found a dead woman's body and was associated with the kidnapping and murder of a baby as a teen. Faith also occasionally visits the two sisters and finds herself shut out by the rigid bonds of the two. The result is a kind of cold relationship that continues through adulthood. But as in all families it is hard to make a break from your family and Faith finds herself often in the thick of their lives.

And because of this, Faith is the perfect narrator to unravel their story and work through its twists and turns to the final page. This is truly a book that is difficult to put down. A very good read.

3 people found this helpful

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SassyPants

A mystery that maintains its mystery

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 26, 2016

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This is my first novel by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine, and have I been missing out! Ms. Rendell is a prolific writer of mysteries, while her alter ego Ms. Vine writes psychological mysteries. A Dark-Adapted Eye is a doozy!

As the title suggests, we do not always see things clearly and things are not always as they appear. Perspective changes. The book is narrated by Faith when she is an adult. She is looking back on her childhood and her time spent with her persnickety and difficult Aunt Vera. We find out early on that Vera has been hanged for murder. Faith has been contacted by an author who wants to write a book about Vera and uncover some family secrets in the process. Additionally, Vera was involved (or was she?) in the disappearance of a 2 year old girl in her care when Vera was a teenager. Some family members agree to help while others refuse. The events are reconstructed by Faith, the author, and various family members. There is much speculation about family relationships and motives. The pictured is muddied by the fact that this is a family who enjoy their secrets. Vera and her sister Eden are idolized by some and reviled by others. To give more plot details would ruin the way the story is slowly revealed in bits and pieces.

Faith is irritated by her aunts Vera and Eden for the way they start a story in the middle and assume you know all the details. The book unravels in the same way. You get nuggets of information from Faith that are not clear until later. That could be irritating, but it is well done here and builds the suspense. I also appreciate that several of the major family secrets remain secrets. If you like your book endings tied in a bow, this is not the book for you. The writing itself is superb. My only quibble with the book is that I had trouble keeping all of the family members straight for about the first third. It is a gnarled family tree and requires all of your attention. I highly recommend this book and will be reading more of Barbara Vine in the future.

14 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

PenFriend

Pretty good but rather inconclusive

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 30, 2022

Verified Purchase

The two sisters, Vera and Eden are a very close couple until something they both want comes between them, which is little Jamie.
Vera is the most convincing character. Neuroses abound in Vera, borne from the early trauma of losing a child in her care, who was found murdered.
Her own son, Francis is a wilful tyrant forever trying to trigger his mother. I really could not believe in him as a pubescent rent boy though... In a Suffolk village?
Alright he has a admirer, but sleepy wartime Suffolk was not known for its rough sex trade.
He is completely horrible though, in every way.
The other annoyingly badly researched part was Eden's ectopic pregnancy. Eden shows no sign of being in the appalling pain of an ectopic pregnancy, even though Vine goes on to detail the symptoms, she misses the appalling pain concomitant with that particular condition. There is no way, that Eden would be walking about bleeding. In fact, you do not bleed much with it as in miscarriage , the bleeding is internal.
The narrator of the story is Faith, who is rather dull as narrators go. There is, also a very dull book within a book trope, one of Rendells favourite ideas. I felt very let down by the researcher never publishing it, and the inconclusive resolution of Jamie's parentage.
Several times, the author seems to be going in one direction with the narrative, only to confound it with a less interesting byline.
It was possible for Jamie to be an abducted child, and I feel sure thar Vine considered this, Vera is quite strange enough to pinch a child, and in wartime it could have plausibly entered the story.
I believe this is considered one of the best of Vine's books, but I found some of the characters could have been fleshed out more, Eden for instance.
Also some characters like Aunt Helen are completely inconsequential and yet are better described than main characters.
I always feel Vine could have done with extra editorial input resolve some of her clangers and dead ends

KittyG26

Good read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 18, 2020

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Rendell always writes well, but her plots can often be unsatisfying in my opinion. I enjoyed this book, however. At first it was a little tricky trying to work out who everybody was and how they were related to one another, but I got used to this. I liked the characters, by and large, and became really involved in the story. The weakest character portrayal was Francis; lots of people get sent to boarding school at a young age (especially at the time when he was a child). Some (not all) may resent this, but for Francis to carry an almost maniacal hatred for his mother because of it seems to be stretching things, to say the least. Also Eden seemed to turn from an initially reasonable person to one who hardly appeared to have a single redeeming feature by the end of the book. It’s as though Rendell didn’t really know how to develop this character.

As a side note, I’m surprised Ruth didn’t know the truth about the Constance Kent case. The crime was not unsolved; Constance confessed to the murder of her half-brother and spent 20 years in prison.

Glilla Bear

Many a slip between lip and cup(!)

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

Oh dear.... Two stars for p250 onward, but discounting the final chapter, which is a sort of post scriptum. Rendell's prose is always striking, if a little pedantic. There is no plot here: it's certainly not a thriller, but rather a long and tedious, anecdotal review of events preceding a killing. HUGE dramatis personae.... I was utterly lost within 20 pages. Sadly, in other respects, Rendell is no Pasternak.

2 people found this helpful

Morven

A real page turner

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 29, 2021

Verified Purchase

It took me a few pages to get into this novel as I was becoming confused by the mention of various different characters but I’m glad I persevered. I enjoyed the story, and felt that the characters were credible and the settings well described. If you’re looking for a page turner I ‘d recommend this.

Tesanna

Certainly "interesting"

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 6, 2016

Verified Purchase

As I was reading this on my Kindle at bedtime, I wished there was a family tree I could refer to as in the early chapters I found it confusing trying to remember who was related to who! It would have been much easier to refer back in a paperback book!! I still haven't finished reading this, but now that I am a lot further on I am getting hooked and wondering what the outcome will be, so I am hoping it will be good?

3 people found this helpful

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