Fragiles serments

by Molly Keane

Grand jour pour lady Bird : la splendide demeure qu'elle
habite avec son époux Julian s'apprête à résonner à nouveau
du tumulte d'une famille au grand complet. John, l'amour de sa
vie, l'aîné de ses trois enfants, est de retour de ce qu'on
s'empressera d'appeler son "voyage à l'étranger" : un séjour en maison de repos à la suite d'une dépression. Pour affronter cet événement, dans une existence largement dévouée à l'entretien du jardin et à la constitution d'une garde-robe à faire pâlir les plus coquettes de la capitale, lady Bird peut compter sur Eliza,une vieille amie de la famille. Fragiles serments est un huis clos grinçant sous le vernis de la paisible haute société anglo-irlandaise. Molly Keane déshabille tout sur son passage,homme, femme, enfant, dans un cortège de personnages plus vrais les uns que les autres.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, Literature, British Literature

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Molly Keane (20 July 1904 – 22 April 1996) was an Irish novelist and playwright (born Mary Nesta Skrine in Ryston Cottage, Newbridge, County Kildare). She grew up at Ballyrankin in County Wexford and was educated at a boarding school in Bray, County Wicklow. She married Bobby Keane, one of a Waterford squirearchical family in 1938 and had two daughters. She used her married name for her later novels, several of which (Good Behaviour, Time After Time) have been adapted for television. Between 1928 and 1956, she wrote 11 novels, and some of her earlier plays, under the pseudonym M.J. Farrell . Molly was a member of Aosdána. Her husband died suddenly in 1946, and following the failure of a play she published nothing for twenty years. In 1981 Good Behaviour came out under her own name; the manuscript, which had languished in a drawer for many years, was lent to a visitor, the actress Peggy Ashcroft, who encouraged Keane to publish it. The novel was warmly received and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

After the death of her husband, Molly Keane moved to Ardmore, County Waterford, a place she knew well, and lived there with her two daughters, Sally and Virginia, until she died in 1996. She is buried beside the Church of Ireland church, almost in the centre of the village.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved it. Lots of people won't. People who have got too grown up and sensible. They've lost the capacity to enter a world created by the writer without messily putting themselves and their opinions right into the middle of it. God forbid all characters must be acceptable to the majority! The way to read it is to walk into its world quietly and observe. There's lots in there. It was refreshing to be in Keane's world, seeing things through her eyes, gleaning what she has learnt about life, hearing about human relationships, seeing this set of people interact, and the consequences.

[Katharine Holden · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would like to line up the characters in Full House and turn the garden hose on them. Silly, contrived, not a red-blooded person in the lot. When the small boy explodes with violence, kicks his little dog, clenches his fists, and talks wildly about killing, the adult characters are awed by his beauty and "passion." I think the reader is supposed to be struck by the characters' endless introspection and lack of vigor. Fading and tired stock, and all that. I just was bored. One of my favorite novels is Molly Keane's late novel Time After Time. I've now read all her others, including the ones written in her early days as M.J. Farrell. I've concluded that Time After Time was her one masterpiece.

[Amy Gentry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most melancholy of Molly Keane's books I've read from this era, Full House isn't successful but it's interesting, and it sets her up for the synthesis of spite and sentiment in her next book, The Rising Tide.

All the usual suspects show up--domineering mother, young man recovering from a mental breakdown, the requisite Anglo-Irish country house, and not one, but two lonely spinsters, albeit from very different social classes--but somehow the elements all feel leftover from different stories, they don't cohere. There's a lot of uncharacteristically (for Keane) sappy sentiment around a child character who seems like an absolute horror show--maybe he was based on some adorable cherub Keane knew, but in that case I think you'd have to know him to love him. I hated him. I actually thought, with all that build-up and the generally bleak tone of the book, that little Markie was going to die. Possibly in a fire accidentally set by the sad spinster governess when she gets drunk one night.

To be honest this would have been a killer ending and even though I was dreading it, I was weirdly disappointed when it didn't happen. It really felt as if Keane had set all the pieces in place and then just couldn't go through with it. Nevertheless, Eliza, the unmarried cosmopolitan artist in her thirties, is one of Keane's most compelling POV characters, and the bearded governess a great step up from Piggy in Devoted Ladies. So this definitely qualifies as worthwhile spinster lit.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read by Molly Keane and I liked how she introduced the main characters to her readers.
She doesn't judge her characters, and let the reader like or hate them.
I absolutely loath Olivia, the mother who acts as if she was the elder sister of her children and doesn't see their hostility to her. She doesn't seem to care about anything but her garden and her servants.
The most interesting characters are the governess who at first seems shy and dull,but who might be happier at the end of the book, and Eliza, the friend of Olivia.
I didn't expect some of her actions (her relationship with John, what she said to Sheena at the end), but she is a truly endearing woman.Her feeling about Julian are well written.

Some scenes are striking, like the one in which the young governess is alone and forgotten on a small island, and how she became quite fierce when she talked, at the end, to another servant.
I did find the parties and the whole Rupert/Sheena relationship quite uninteresting.
And I'm still amazed about the behavior of all the family toward Markie. They all love him and are very pemissive whereas he is just a spoiled brat.

[Neralie Hoadley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting to read an unselfconscious setting in the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. The colonial privilege of these householders is entirely unquestioned. I have never read any Irish literature that gives this perspective before.

[Aurélie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un peu déçue par ce livre. J'ai beaucoup aimé l'ambiance et l'écriture par contre l'intrigue ne m'a pas intéressée.

[Loredana · Rating 3 out of 5]

C’était une bonne lecture de vacances mais un peu superficielle, j’aurais aimé plus de profondeur

[Darla Ebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This classic is ok, I just had trouble following the lives of the characters and did not find their problems to be very interesting (to read). I know Ms. Keane was a remarkable and popular writer, but this particular story of hers is not my favorite

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it but with reservations. Some of the plot lines were a bit contrived and the plot twist that was the book's turning point was predictable and trite. The characters were eccentric but believable. I think that poor bearded Miss Pierson was my favorite and I was pleased to see her come out of her shell and quietly assert herself. Hope she found love with Nick eventually but Keane didn't reward her with that even though she deserved it.

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I did. But I knew after the first chapter that it was an impossible task. I wanted to dope slap each and every one of the characters for their selfishness and cruelty and indifference. This being the first MJ Farrell book that I have read I forced my way through it. It may be the last book of he that I read. Gads, those are hours I cannot get back.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very enjoyable. Lady Bird in particular was such an interesting character.