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A Dark-Adapted Eye

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A Dark-Adapted Eye

By: Barbara Vine
Narrated by: Harriet Walter
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About this listen

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 '50s 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.

©1986 Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Amateur Sleuths Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Mystery Private Investigators Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense Detective

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The author’s forte is in her depiction of human relationships whether writing detective fiction as Ruth Rendell or in her more psychological novels as Barbara Vine. This book is not a detective story and from the beginning we know that Vera has killed her sister Eden. The whole book is a detailed unravelling of why this occurred through the voice of Faith: the niece of the victim and perpetrator. Most of the characters are flawed and not particularly likeable but the narrative is utterly compelling and I was drawn into a hot-house of emotions among family members and their their dysfunctional relationships.

This is justifiably rated as one of the author’s best books and made a great listen.

Harriet Walter is an accomplished narrator and skilfully portrayed both young and old, male and female.

Compelling exposure of a family’s secrets

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A brilliant, dark, thought-provoking story with some of the most well-realised and complex characters I’ve ever come across. Whatever ‘crime’ novels or ‘detective fiction’ or ‘thrillers’ are usually supposed to be, for me this utterly transcended those genres. As the narrator comments, we know from the start who the killer is and how the murder was done. Instead of focussing on that, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) unfolds the psychology of the Hillyard family with a perceptiveness that sometimes takes your breath away. It made me think that other books I’ve read with supposedly ‘deep’ or ‘complex’ characters are quite flat and obvious by comparison. There are lots of twists in the plot, but they never felt like contrivances or clever tricks. They come about as Faith, the character who narrates the story, grows gradually wiser and more perceptive about the secretive ways of her two aunts – as her ‘eye’ adapts to understand their dark behaviour, to paraphrase the title. Harriet Walter was an excellent reader, appropriately understated in her delivery but giving distinctive, memorable voices to the characters, many of whom are painfully repressed and reserved. This is the first Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell I’ve read or listened to, and I’ll certainly read more now.

Brilliant story, with dark and complex characters

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If you could sum up A Dark-Adapted Eye in three words, what would they be?

This book is often rated as Ruth Rendell's best, and I agree. It's so much more than a crime novel; and Ruth Rendell is so much more than a crime writer. It's not for nothing Jeanette Winterson calls her mother.
Having read the preview, I did hesitate, as I wondered whether it would be too unsettling at night going to sleep listening to the 'voice' of a victim/ criminal without Inspector Wexford as a sane, down-to-earth intermediary, but it wasn't the case at all. The narrator of the story is an ingenue, and it was performed wonderfully by Harriet Walter.

Brilliant!

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I loved the presentation of this story. It was atmospheric and completely credible. Saving the best till last. I'm hooked and want to read more by this author.

Great Story

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It's ok tempted more than once to give up and kind of wish I had as no real story to it.

ok just a bit dull

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