A Dark-Adapted Eye

by Barbara Vine
A Dark-Adapted Eye cover
Good Books rating 4.33
Technical:
  • ID: 199
  • Added: 2025-09-04
  • Updated: 2025-09-04
  • ISBN: 9780141040189
  • Publisher: Penguin UK
  • Published: 2009-05-07
  • Reviews: 3
Reviews
Loulou Reads · 2024-11-25
reflective 4.50

The review emphasizes the novel’s skill in showing how long-standing family dynamics and secrets culminate in tragedy, with richly developed characters and a thoughtful, reflective narrative voice.

This review praises Barbara Vine’s ability to trace the subtle, gradual build-up of tension and tragedy within a family deeply marked by dark secrets. The narrator Faith’s reflections on her childhood and the wartime years spent with her aunts offer a compelling lens through which readers understand the complex relationships and motivations, making the novel a standout in psychological crime fiction. The reviewer warmly recommends the book for its powerful characterizations and the way it invites readers to reconsider past events with new insight, encapsulated by the metaphor of the 'dark-adapted eye.'

Quick quotes

    Vine's great skill is in showing how the seeds of this terrible event were sown and watered over the years.

    Many years ago, her aunt Vera Hillyard committed a murder and was hanged for it.

    She begins to see things she hadn’t noticed or hadn’t understood as a child, and starts to make sense of why things unfolded as they did – hence the dark-adapted eye of the title.

The Grandest Game · 2020-11-07
sophisticated 4.00

The book is recognized as a sophisticated psychological thriller with strong gothic elements, successfully peeling back layers of a grim family tragedy despite some less effective subplots.

The reviewer values Rendell's (writing as Barbara Vine) skill in revealing the complex emotional and psychological layers behind the murder, particularly through the poignant and evocative memories of the narrator, Faith. While the main story and character dynamics are compelling and well developed, the reviewer notes that some present-day subplots, especially the true-crime book project framing device, feel less engaging and the remaining mysteries are not as compelling as expected. Overall, the book stands as superior gothic entertainment that blends period detail with psychological suspense.

Quick quotes

    Rendell/Vine does a masterful job of unpeeling the layers of this grim, sad tale.

    Faith’s reminiscences (textured, one suspects, with autobiographical material) are wry, poignant, evocative.

    Some of the present-day subplots, on the other hand, are less effectively developed.

A Year of Reading Women · 2011-05-31
masterful 4.50

The novel is praised for its complex narrative structure and richly drawn characters, especially the conflicted Vera Hillyard, whose rigid adherence to social rules contrasts with her tragic victimhood.

This review appreciates the novel's intricate storytelling, which unfolds mainly through the narrator Faith’s shifting memories and perspectives, revealing layers of secrets that complicate the central murder mystery. The reviewer highlights how Barbara Vine skillfully manages a large cast of characters, each vividly portrayed with distinct desires and grudges, making Vera Hillyard a particularly striking figure embodying both self-deception and victimhood in a grim family drama.

Quick quotes

    Vera Hillyard — by turns the personification of Sartre’s Bad Faith with her obsessive adherence to rigid rules about deportment and manners, and the pathetic victim of a vicious game the rules of which she can only dimly recognise.

    Vine steers it mistressfully, though, using two main techniques: she uses inquiries from a biographer interested in profiling Vera Hillyard as a spur and then series of guideposts for unfolding the narrative.

    Each of the large cast of characters looms from the page with a startling set of needs, desires and grudges of his or her own.

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