A Dark-Adapted Eye cover art

A Dark-Adapted Eye

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

A Dark-Adapted Eye

By: Barbara Vine
Narrated by: Harriet Walter
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £15.99

Buy Now for £15.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

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

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Brimstone Wedding cover art
Vanity Dies Hard cover art
Master of the Moor cover art
The Blood Doctor cover art
Shake Hands For Ever cover art
The Outrun cover art
Olive Kitteridge cover art
The Mysterious Affair at Styles cover art
Duet cover art
The Complete Short Stories cover art
Murder in the Crypt cover art
The Magnolia Palace cover art
The Woman in White cover art
Touch Not the Cat cover art
The Unknown Beloved cover art
Spring House cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
I listened to the whole book. very confusing. never got t grips with it

very strange.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very complicated storyline that was difficult to follow. I gave up after Chapter 3, I never do that!

Such intricate family trees and detailed history.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Tremendous performance by Harriet Walter. Barbara Vine writes beautifully. A deep and intense account of a family secret with a tragic ending.

Beautifully written and read but how intense!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The writing was superb as was the narration. This book puts very many modern stories to shame. I loved it.

a wonderful, skilled book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A spellbinding story of human emotions and follies which kept me enthralled from start to finish. Harriet Walter’s narration was superb! Thank you Audible!

A Dark Adapted Eye

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A tale of family secrets and lies brought together by clever plotting and a first-rate narrator.

Intriguing and unusual. Beautifully narrated.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Tried hard to keep going with the story but really it's very dreary so boring, sorry not for me! The reader was good though and did her best.

Tried hard to listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A Barbara Vine book I always meant to read but never did which is a shame as the gentle, detailed story telling belies a superb psychological thriller. Unlike more recent examples of the genre, this is no sensational quick fix but a crafted tale set in a by-gone era where societies attitudes were different to those of today.
The title's worth a mention - the 'dark-adapted eye' [one that has adjusted to darkness so that it's able to discern the shape of things] is that of Faith, the two main protagonist's niece, as she looks back upon her family's checkered history, to analyse it, unravel it's darkest secrets, that ultimately lead up to the murder of one aunt & the subsequent hanging of the other as set before the repeal of the death penalty.



Who doesn't love a family secret?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A thoughtfully written story from Barbara Vine with excellent narration by Harriet Walter. The story is complex and I thought it developed slowly- in fact I almost gave up due to the complicated nature of the timeline and the host of different characters.
However I’m glad I persevered and I became determined to find out who the victim was and why. I can’t say that I liked any of the characters much but that doesn’t detract from the story being a fascinating one.

Great storytelling

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have listened to a couple of previous novels and really enjoyed. However, i found that I couldn’t really care about the story or the characters, and was left unfulfilled by this book.

Not her best novel

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews