A Dark-Adapted Eye

My Great Books Book Club chose this Edgar Award winning book for our October meeting. I am usually cramming the monthly selection in the day before or day of our monthly meeting (and sometimes after!), but finished this selection several weeks early.

From the first page, I was rather turned off by what seemed like an impenetrable story; Faith Severn, our narrator, refers to various people or events in the first few chapters as though the reader ought to know all about them. Flicking back, thinking I'd been distracted, I could not unearth information it seemed I should have picked up. At that early stage of reading the book, I kept asking myself how this book won a major award and whether it might be akin to the Booker Prize winners I have desperately not enjoyed. In fact, the wall of wandering family history in the third chapter nearly put me off the book entirely. However, after sticking with it, I was rewarded by a layered and unusually, as well as masterfully, crafted story. I later realized that Faith was a Longley woman and had taken on this very style of storytelling (or not telling) from her Aunt Vera and Aunt Eden.

As I moved through the book, Vine dropped little crumbs that sometimes added to the mystery or peeled away another layer of onion skin. Even from the beginning, family members take on slightly sinister aspects and, in my opinion, just about every given name and surname created misdirection on who a character really is. These dark portents are what hooked me.

Two more slights of hand come with the almost sidebar, but intriguing, stories of the missing toddlers Kathleen March and Sunny Durham. These two tales cast more doubt on Vera's innocence; even when we learn who the likely killer of both girls is, the inky undercurrents of both little girls' deaths ebb forward.

The framework of an author prospecting a family scandal that the narrator had never been able to or allowed to fully explore worked well in Vine's capable hands. Motives and events that weren't clear due to Faith's age, family position, location, and/or family members' sense of propriety or willful misdirection emerge from Faith's review of source letters and interviews, as well as careful re-examination of her own memories.

Yet we end “A Dark-Adapted Eye” without an absolute answer on a central mystery of Jamie's parentage. Brilliant! Here I sit, still pondering so many questions. Could Vera truly have induced lactation without having a child of her own? Was the birth certificate that Eden brandished at Vera authentic or a forgery? Stepping back to Vera's first child, the seemingly sociopathic Francis, how could a woman who so poorly mothered her first child and evilly aunted Faith also be the beaming epitome of perfect motherhood for Jamie? What else may have happened to Vera before or during her time in India that Faith never uncovers?

I'm truly glad I stuck with this book and recommend it for anyone looking for a bit of a challenge (this is no bon bon beach read).


“A Dark-Adapted Eye” Discussion Questions (I wrote these questions to share with my Great Books Book Club at our October 2024 meeting and will update once the other book club member working on questions provides them )

1. What is a dark-adapted eye in terms of biology? How does that concept relate to the title and story?
2. Ruth Rendell was known for writing a detective series and other relatively traditional mysteries in which a murder occurs at the beginning and the murderers identity is revealed towards the end. Rendell chose the pen name Barbara Vine to write a different style of mystery, which some consider “softer” or focused more on psychological drama. How effective is a (and this) mystery that begins with knowing who the murderer is vs a more traditional structure?
3. What is the meaning of the main character names? Do the names' meanings represent their owner properly in terms of the story? (I.e. Vera, Vranni, Edith/Eden, Faith, Helen, Gerald, Andrew, Francis, Jamie). How about various surnames (Chateriss, Hillyard, Langley, Severn, Pearmain)?
4. Is Faith Severn a reliable narrator?
5. Why do you think Barbara Vine chose to create such a confusing and labrynthine family history? By the end of the book, did you feel like you understood the family structure better?
6. What is the impact of social classes on the book?
7. How did setting the story during and around World War II affect the events of the novel? If the novel had been set when it was released, in the mid-1980s, would the story have unraveled differently?
8. Did you find it odd that the writer, Daniel Stewart, decided to abandon the book project after finding out the family secret?
9. Who is Jamie's mother and why do you think so? Does the author ever reveal the truth to the reader absolutely?

Interesting Blog Posts & Links:

https://www.criminalelement.com/the-edgar-awards-revisited-a-dark-adapted-eye-by-barbara-vine-best-novel-1987/

https://crimereads.com/queer-texas-barbara-vine/

Almost complete family tree from a nice Goodreads person: https://www.goodreads.com/questions/432242-i-am-totally-lost-in-the-family-genealogy

The perfect accompaniment to the nursing of calcium deposits in my lower abdomen. I read the back half horizontal on the couch, drinking glass after glass of water.

The mystery has no real bottom, and thats a feature not a flaw. A few more proper nouns than I was always ready to keep track of but once I get the geography straight it was riveting.

It started slow at first but after the first few chapters, the sense of menace grew. It's not such a whodunit as a why the murder took place.
The setting is an English countryside and most of the story takes place during WW2. Faith recounts the personalities of her aunts and the events that led to the murder.
Ruth Rendell's characters are fascinating individuals and it's through her sharp portrayals of them that a scene involving women and a child can become as suspenseful as an action thriller.
This was a quiet family drama-tragedy, laying open ugly conflicts and the cruelty that exists within relationships - overt and subtle.