Good Behaviour

Name: Good Behaviour
Author: Molly Keane
ISBN: 9781681375304

Molly Keane

awards won

score

Good Behaviour

Molly Keane

awards won

score

See the full ranking

Good Behaviour was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. A wickedly funny satire of Irish society after WWI, the novel opens as Aroon St. Charles prepares to serve her invalid mother a splendid luncheon—the silver gleams, the linens glow—of rabbit mousse, a dish her mother despises. In fact, a single whiff of the stuff is enough to knock the old lady dead. "All my life so far I have done everything for the best reasons and the most unselfish motives," says Aroon soon after. In the pages that follow she will make her case, reminiscing about her youth among the hunting-and-fishing classes of Ireland, a faded aristocracy dedicated to distraction even as their fortunes dwindle. Keane's brilliant sleight of hand is to allow her blinkered heroine to narrate her own development from neglected child, to ungainly debutante, to bitter spinster: Aroon understands nothing, yet she reveals all.

Buy this book at Amazon