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A review by emmkayt
Good Behavior by Molly Keane
4.0
A clever, poisonous novel about largely unclever, poisonous people, a snobbish, financially distressed Anglo-Irish family. They do no work, and are contemptuous of anyone who does, horrified by the effrontery of tradespeople and staffers who expect to be paid for their services. Their home is in a state of decay and their sense of entitlement is endless.
The narrator is the daughter of the house, Aroon St Charles. As the book opens, she is in her 50s, ignoring the protestations of a loyal staffer and bringing her elderly mother a rabbit mousse that her mother most decidedly does not want. The tale then loops back through childhood (“Even then I knew how to ignore things. I knew how to behave.”) and young adulthood, during which bosomy Aroon’s physical being is at odds with the aesthetic of the 1920s but she allows herself to have hopes of her brother’s friend, Richard. Various unspeakable things happen and are, as one would expect, never spoken of. Resentments congeal, and the scene from the outset of the book is better understood.
The narrator is the daughter of the house, Aroon St Charles. As the book opens, she is in her 50s, ignoring the protestations of a loyal staffer and bringing her elderly mother a rabbit mousse that her mother most decidedly does not want. The tale then loops back through childhood (“Even then I knew how to ignore things. I knew how to behave.”) and young adulthood, during which bosomy Aroon’s physical being is at odds with the aesthetic of the 1920s but she allows herself to have hopes of her brother’s friend, Richard. Various unspeakable things happen and are, as one would expect, never spoken of. Resentments congeal, and the scene from the outset of the book is better understood.