A Dark-Adapted Eye

I recently read Barbara Vine's mystery A Dark-Adapted Eye and I also watched the BBC adaptation of the novel again. (I'd seen it in the 1990s when it aired, but I didn't remember much about it.) Thankfully, it's on You Tube now since there's no DVD version available in the US. It's the story of two sisters. One sister kills the other and then hangs for the crime. What's fascinating about the book is the way Vine weaves and later exposes so many family secrets into the plot. As I was reading the book, I kept thinking, If these people just talked to each other honestly, a lot of these problems could be worked out! But these upper-crust British folks during the time period when the novel takes place (largely during WWII in the 1940s and after the war in the early to mid-1950s) just didn't discuss personal things freely. The main characters were so concerned with keeping up appearances and lying to make others think that nothing was wrong that their lies and denial ultimately wrecked their family. Pay no attention to the main behind the curtain! There's also a homosexual plot line within the novel, something I didn't recall from the miniseries (but I did see it initially probably 20 years ago). The gay character who is later revealed as such in the novel, came as a surprise to me because I didn't see it coming. (Watching the miniseries now, I certainly picked up on it, but when I read the book, I didn't.) I wrote recently about another Barbara Vine book I read and enjoyed called No Night Is Too Long and that book, as with this one, had gay characters. I'm about to read Vine's novel The Child's Child and that one also has a gay character. I had no idea Vine rolled like that until I started reading her work. Kudos to the late author for being so progressive in her writing.