A review by kmg365
Good Behaviour by Molly Keane

3.0

The first chapter made me wonder who this horrid woman was, and why she hated her mother so much that she felt the need to torture her on her deathbed.

Then the rest of the book explained exactly that, and I rather regretted wanting to know.

Having finished the book feels rewarding, and I see why some consider it a modern classic. The process of reading it, however, was no fun at all, and it was only because it was a book club book that I stuck it out.

I felt so sorry for the wretched Aroon. That is, I felt sorry for her when I wasn’t angry with her for being so naïve, so clueless, so inert. I wanted her to have one genuinely happy day wherein the happiness was not due to self-delusion.

The comedy here is so black as to have been invisible to me. I can see why others find elements of it funny, but I found myself wanting to rescue everyone from the book, sneaking in under cover of night to shepherd the entire cast of characters out a back door of Temple Alice and into a nice P.G. Wodehouse novel.