Good Behavior

by Molly Keane

I do know how to behave - believe me, because I know. I have always known...'

Behind the gates of Temple Alice the aristocratic Anglo-Irish St Charles family sinks into a state of decaying grace. To Aroon St Charles, large and unlovely daughter of the house, the fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem locked out by the ritual patterns of good behaviour. But crumbling codes of conduct cannot hope to save the members of the St Charles family from their own unruly and inadmissible desires.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Ireland, Historical Fiction, Irish Literature, Book Club, Novels

245 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 1981

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

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What did I just read? This book has been around for many years…where was I? Under a rock?

The book was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize which was eventually won by Salman Rushdie with “Midnight’s Children”. Others on shortlist were Ian McEwan (The Comfort of Strangers) and Doris Lessing (The Sirian Experiments). Well, at least some folks had the good sense to put it on the shortlist.

This is one of those books where you really cannot trust the narrator. There must be many others like this, and I’d like to hear from other GR folks what books they can think of that come to mind regarding this genre – unreliable narrators of a story who tell their side of things and it’s distorted from what really happened. I read a fave book this year for the second time, A Debt to Pleasure (John Lanchester, 1996 – 1996 Whitbread Book Award in the First Novel category) …. that book, too, had an unreliable and devious narrator (Tarquin Winor).

All I can say is if this is not on your TBR list, please consider placing this book on it. If it is already on your TBR list, well…please consider bumping it up! 😊 🙃 😉

I read it in two sittings. One of those deals where I couldn’t put it down. My kinda book! 😊

The book opens up to the present day of the life of Aroon St. Charles, 57 years of age. Her mother has just died from eating a rabbit mousse. She is deathly allergic to rabbit. Well, she is dead, so I guess the proof is in the pudding…oops, I meant mousse! 😝

The rest of the book beings us back to Aroons’ birth and then moves forward to when she is in her 30s. I’m sure other reviews have nicely captured the gist of the story. I just, in this review, wanted to let you know my enthusiasm for this wonderful and clever work of fiction.

This was Molly Keane’s first book in which she used her real name…prior books by her used the pseudonym of M.J. Farrell. I do not know how old she was when she wrote this – in the preface Amy Gentry tells us that “Keane’s publisher of nearly fifty years rejected it, saying it was too nasty and suggesting she write at least one “nice” character. She refused. It sat in a drawer for years until her friend the actor Peggy Ashcroft read it during a visit and urged Keane to try again.” It got published in 1981…Keane was nearly 80 years old.

Notes: High praise indeed from some writers (on back cover of NYRB edition):
• Hilary Mantel: I really wish I had written this book. It’s a tragi-comedy set in Ireland after the First World War. A real work of craftsmanship, where the heroine is also the narrator, yet has no idea what is going on. You read it with mounting horror and hilarity as you begin to grasp her delusion.
• Diana Athill: Bad Behaviour is so clever, it’s mind-blowing…There are moments when the reader pauses to congratulate him or herself for being astute enough to twig what is really going on…It is as though we are seeing events unfold which we can then interpret for ourselves, and the effect of this is much more poignant than explication would be.
• Maggie O’Farrell (Jim: so close to her pseudonym!): Nobody else can touch Molly Keane as a satirist, tragedian, and dissector of human behavior.

Reviews
• https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n...
• This review is from Diana Athill. She was an editor for the publisher Andre Deutsch, and she was responsible for approving that the publishing house accept and publish the book…this is at the end of a review of the book written by Athill: “Not long before she died in 1996, when guiding a pen over paper had become difficult, she wrote me a little goodbye letter. In it she thanked me for publishing Good Behaviour, with the most emphatic declaration of how much it had meant to her – how it had given her a new life. It was a deeply sad letter, being such a clear indication that the end was near, but it was also a wonderfully generous gift. I am not a letter-keeper. But nothing would have made me throw that one away.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
• https://openlettersreview.com/posts/g...
• https://heavenali.wordpress.com/2016/...

[Fionnuala]

When I read this in the early eighties, it was a huge eye opener for several reasons. It was probably one of the first contemporary novels that made me think - ah, now I know what is meant by a classic. Even though I was a fairly unsophisticated reader at the time, I could tell that the writing was superb, I just knew that the characters were true to life, and I even suspected that they were portraits of real people. I admired the way Molly Keane was able to ridicule all our human foibles while maintaining a certain sympathy for her characters on the part of the reader. If she hadn't been nominated for the Booker prize in 1981, this novel would have escaped my attention, and that of many other readers, I suspect. Looking back to the early years of the Booker short list, I realise that it brought to our attention some authors who would otherwise have escaped the public eye, and who subsequently did disappear from view for one reason or another. Who remembers Keri Hulme and her moving but disturbing novel, The Bone People?

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molly Keane had two careers as a writer. She took up writing out of sheer boredom at seventeen when she was confined to bed with an illness in the early 1920s. She wrote as M J Farrell, a name she had seen over a pub door. She wanted to keep her writing secret as it would have been disapproved of in her social circle in Ireland:
"for a woman to read a book, let alone write one was viewed with alarm: I would have been banned from every respectable house in Co. Carlow."
Keane was part of the decaying Anglo-Irish aristocracy/middle class. She wrote until 1946 when her husband died, and didn’t start again until 1981 when this novel was published and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
When this came out Keane spoke about her upbringing in an interview:
“Mother’s father governed various little islands like Mauritius and she came back from there to marry my father. She loved her sons but she didn’t love me. I was jolly hard to love. Totally disobedient. She feared for me as she would if I had been a hippy and taken drugs. She never stopped being a Victorian. It was a class thing I grew up with, good behaviour. Don’t whine and don’t make a fuss. If you broke your neck you must pretend you hadn’t.”
This novel at its heart has conflict between mother and daughter and starts with murder by rabbit mousse! It concerns the St Charles family and particularly the daughter Aroon. This is the 1920s and Aroon is tall, clumsy and by societal norms unlovely. It is narrated by Aroon and has one reviewer has said:
“..everything is explained and nothing is said.”
So there is sex, murder, suicide, pregnancy, masturbation, nannies, class, queer characters and much more. But nothing is directly named. The satire is sharp as is the dissection of emotional relationships:
“Our good behaviour went on and on, endless as the days. No one spoke of the pain we were sharing. Our discretion was almost complete. Although they feared to speak, Papa and Mummie spent more time together; but, far from comforting, they seemed to freeze each other deeper in misery.”
The title is important and Kean has a way of using words effectively to put across a feeling with sinister undertones:
“I had time to consider how the punctual observance of the usual importances is the only way to behave at such times as these. And I do know how to behave –believe me, because I know. I have always known. All my life so far have done everything for the best reasons and the most unselfish motives. I have lived for the people dearest to me, and I am at a loss to know why their lives have been at times so perplexingly unhappy.”
I was pleasantly surprised by this one as I am always wary of books portraying impoverished aristos these days, but there is an edge to this.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nightmare of a family story told by a daughter (most definitely an unreliable narrator) who’s reflecting upon the past that led to the death of her mother (in the first chapter). I continue to reflect on the servant Rose’s motivations.

This is another book I have the #NYRBWomen23 group to thank for my reading of and for a great discussion, which always seems to make my reviews shorter (not that that's a complaint).

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's behaviour - let's just leave it at that ........

Molly Keane's study of the 'good' behaviour of a family of Irish aristocrats and their servants in the 1920's is superb.

I've put 'good' in inverted commas, because it's behaviour but the 'good' part is certainly in question as we follow their shenanigans playing musical beds, drama with the governess and the neighbours etcetera etcetera all under the 'innocent' eyes of Aroon, born and well bred with the 'stiff upper lip' culture. Uneducated in what she is seeing she puts everything as she's told under 'good' manners, you can do anything if you say please and thankyou and not moan about. Even kill your mother.

It might remind us of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, that too is something dressed as another by the story being told. You have all the right to smile and laugh at the stories but remember that these stories are being used in our daily lives as well and we have to be careful to separate what we are actually seeing from the stories being 'told'.

Thank you Jim for insisting I read it.

[mina]

everyone who’s read this book loves to point out the unreliable narrator - so naive to everything around her. but how much of her unawareness is naivety vs. self-preservation?

[elle]

opening paragraph alone convinced me to pick this up: "Rose smelt the air, considering what she smelt; a miasma of unspoken criticism and disparagement fogged the distance between us. I knew she ached to censure my cooking, but through the years I have subdued her. Those wide shoulders and swinging hips were once parts of a winged quality she had - a quality reduced and corrected now, I am glad to say."

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Anglo-Irish family whose members are dedicated to mutual assured destruction, even as they slide into genteel poverty. Nobody in the St Charles household would dream of treating the dogs or horses badly; servants and local tradesmen don't fare so well. But the brunt of their vituperation is saved for one another, with each family member nursing a store of petty grievances, both real and imaginary. Our guide for this particular version of hell is the unlovely, delusional daughter of the house, Aroon. Neglected by her philandering father, despised by her icy mother, used by her charming brother, she pines for love and approval. Her transformation to bitter, vengeful, old maid is inevitable and heartbreaking to watch.

The stifling closed world of the decaying Anglo-Irish ascendancy is Molly Keane's chosen niche, and nobody captures it better (except, perhaps, William Trevor). While parts of "Good Behaviour" are very funny indeed, it is considerably darker and more complex than the rest of her books, all of which cover similar ground. An engaging, if ultimately depressing, account of a not so well-behaved family.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is what you would describe as a book for grown-ups - and yes there is plenty of sex. But what is interesting here is Keane's in-depth knowledge of her main character, Aroon St. Charles. I read Good Behaviour with the help of my friend, Canadian Reader and I think she would agree, that neither of us liked or felt an iota of sympathy for Aroon until we had finished the book and stepped away from its horrors.

Our reading experience was one where we were continually held at arm's length from the main character, and yet there are multiple occasions when we could have been drawn in. Time and again Aroon defies us to feel pity or even empathy.

Aroon begins her story when she is a small child:

. . . I am again in the darkness of the nursery, the curtains drawn against the winter morning outside. Nannie is dragging on her corsets under her great nightdress. Baby Hubert is walking up and down his cot in a dirty nightdress. The nursery maid is pouring paraffin on a sulky nursery fire. I fix my eyes on the strip of morning light where wooden rings join curtains to curtain pole and think about my bantams . . . Even then I knew to ignore things. I knew how to behave.

I don't blame Mummie for all this. She simply did not want to know what was going on in the nursery. She had had us and she longed to forget the horror of it for once and all. She engaged nannie after nannie with excellent references, and if they could not be trusted to look after us, she was even less able to compete. She didn't really like children; she didn't like dogs either, and she had no enjoyment of food, for she ate almost nothing.

What follows is a believable story of a dysfunctional family. They are part of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy falling into decline after the First War and the Irish Independance wars in the early part of the 20th century - although there is not a single reference to this important political event in Irish history.

The story is tightly focussed around Aroon's childhood and her "coming out" years and her first and only love affair with her brother's friend, Richard. Towards the end of the book there are a number of extended chapters that follow Aroon to a local Big House, where there is new money. There she learns of Richard's engagement to another and within the same night she loses her father.

This climax right at the end allows perhaps our only observance of a natural reaction, and our focus on this I think allowed CR and myself into the tragedy of Aroon's character. The mother's neglect combined with the father's gentlemanly behaviour discouraged any true engagement with their children. Keane's ruthless analysis permits the reader to see the folly and the disaster of Good Behaviour smothering any natural feeling in this family.

[CanadianReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Behaviour was on the the 1981 Booker Prize shortlist and is one of Anglo-Irish writer Molly Keane’s better-known works. It’s the first novel of hers I’ve tackled, and I’m glad my understanding of the book was expanded and enriched by reading and discussing it with my Goodreads friend, Laura.

The novel opens dramatically with the death of fifty-seven-year-old Aroon’s elderly mother. It’s up to the reader to decide if her demise is, in fact, a murder. Aroon feeds “Mummie”, a heart patient, rabbit, a food that the woman loathes and which Rose, the family’s longtime cook and servant, warns has sickened the old lady in the past. No matter. Aroon brings up the prettily arranged tray to the patient who lies on the prettily arranged pillows in a prettily redecorated room. A whiff of the meal is enough to make Mummie drop dead. Rose promptly accuses Aroon of killing her mother. Did she? And, if so, what provoked the act? In the subsequent thirty-three chapters, Aroon tells the story of her family, shedding light on how she arrived at this place.

It should be noted that Good Behaviour is not a thriller. Beginning with the title, it’s an ironic and often dark work. No one in this novel, set mostly in the first quarter of the twentieth century, behaves well; the bad behaviour is just hidden and generally imperceptible to Aroon, the naïve narrator of a story dealing with the decline of the Anglo-Irish landed class in general and Aroon’s family, the very dysfunctional St. Charleses, in particular.

Aroon is highly observant, but having lived an insular life on the increasingly run-down family estate and having only the governess, Mrs. Brock, as her single reliable source of affection, the young girl lacks the knowledge and experience to interpret what she sees with any accuracy. Aroon’s mother is distant and neglectful. She spends her days immersed in gardening and art, occasionally painting Aroon’s attractive younger brother Hubert. She disdains Aroon, not only because her daughter is large and ungainly, but also because she views the girl as a rival for the attention of Major St. Charles, Aroon’s father, a charismatic outdoorsy man with a harem of “lady friends”. When Aroon’s brother goes off to university in England and returns with a friend, Richard, the young woman falls in love with the glamorous visitor. Aroon is so thrilled to be included by Hubert and Richard and so ignorant of the ways of the wider world that she cannot recognize she’s being used by the two young men. The boys are in love with each other, and Aroon’s presence keeps the suspicious Major St. Charles off their case.

Part of the pleasure in reading this book arises from having to interpret what Aroon observes but does not understand. Keane’s novel is rich in small details, and certain images repeat and reinforce each other over time. None of the characters is pleasant, yet I found that midway through the book Aroon had my sympathy. Having said that, I must clarify that the ironic tone of the novel always keeps the reader at a distance from the characters. Even so, this is a brilliant and very clever novel. Not enjoyable in the usual sense, but rewarding.

[Mariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

She must have noticed my bosoms, swinging like jelly bags, bouncing from side to side; without words she conveyed the impression of what she had seen as unseemly- the Fat Lady in the peepshow.

Aroon St Charles topsy-turvies the pedestal biosphere that doesn't leave the suffocating family life. Oops, heads and tails are the same damn fix. The outside life must look like dim glamour in her imaginations. Other people who don't look like her whirling in arms inside blurry parties. Letters from spoiled children in Africa. Dear Penthouse, oppression and slaughter. Solicitors behind closed doors. The future is the same kind of life. The past is the same damp material from sobbing wet dreams. The rest of the St Charles clan that also includes the servants hold her in their judge first, see later. Papa and brother precede her as a joke. I hate it when she's grinning with the punchline like they'll start laughing with her. Servants conspire to keep the big girl hungry. Aroon reminded me of Janet Frame's Faces in the Water when the likewise no safe corner heroine sneaks chocolates from other inmates. She quickly eats the short breads and cake slices before her father's pampering cook cum nurse Rose can come back in time (I bet he fucked her a time or two). Aroon just knows that when her mother is in charge she will never get to eat. Rose won't cook for her and the skinny mama never eats.

Good Behaviour begins when the self pitying fantasy is done. Papa left everything to Aroon and she after all can withhold pity and control over them. At first I just thought it was a waste to live your life hoping for others to be grateful to you. Never trust anyone who says they know what is best for you. It is probably a self reassurance that they are living their own the right way if you are doing it too. But no, Keane only detuned the hard chairs. Rose in the end accuses Aroon. Mummie dies to spite her. They were always like that. Backs turned, you don't fit our parameters of whatever. I really think they wouldn't have colluded over anything if Aroon hadn't been there to leave out. There once was a brother and his friend (probably lover) Richard love each other more when they can giggle and close their door on Aroon. Papa can fuck the governess on the sly. No one gave any other fuck about that governess. I really just thought it was a shame that anyone thought that was all life had to offer. There had to be better lays out there than that old fart. Maybe if Aroon had met another man than snotty ass Richard she would have wanted something more. It was too bad that her fantasies are so limp dicked. What is it worth if these boring family members say they appreciate you? I wish I could give her that part in Fat Kid Rules the World when the fat kid realizes what he was imagining that skinny people didn't have any problems because they were skinny (and start a band!). I really wish Good Behaviour didn't numb me with the day in and day out of alliances. That's probably how dreams died in that purgatory before dreams are born. Aroon won't let her sick father have his whiskey (the doctor said it was okay. I suspected he might have been against it if someone other than the lackluster Aroon had asked him). Maybe because she was too "good girl" to pity him (man was gonna die anyway). It started to feel like being with them too long every time something happened like Papa and brother infecting their society with jokes about Big Girl Aroon. I kinda felt like after all that it wasn't a bad thing if Aroon got one over them. They were never going to love her. But at least she didn't have to go hungry. I don't want to think about all of the ugly women who didn't have jobs or families who loved them. They probably ended up in mental institutions like Janet Frame or eeked out in poverty. Growing older and colder. What do you do before they bury you? It is too bad that I felt like I was being buried more than Keane saying anything about this.

I read this on my kindle. The whole time I casted different Tamara de Lempicka portraits for the cover. Virago use her a lot and the larger than life/world is less frame of girls in their places just felt so Good Behaviour and big girl Aroon to me. But no! I'm sure the paperback from them has some irritating descriptor about black humor and raucous whatever (anything called "raucous" instantly puts me in the mood to want to like it less). I don't know about the humor in Good Behaviour. I wish it had a sense of humor that was internal. It is external like theirs a soulless mindless god. Hey, you weren't there the day we passed out what other people got. Here's a pale copy to watch what it could have looked like, Aroon. I wish she had been there when they handed down imagination. ANYTHING other than bland stupid Richard. She was pining over HIM?! I wish I could stop reading books that are really just about people wanting to see themselves a certain way and everyone and everything else in the world is about supporting that self vision. There wasn't anyone in Good Behaviour not like that.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Camp and fabulous, and also heartbreaking. It opens with the narrator, Aroon St. Charles, 57, murdering her mother with a rabbit mousse - this is no spoiler, it happens in the first pages. Set in Ireland in the 1910s and 1920s and then forward, the St. Charles' are Anglo-Irish aristocracy of a sort with an estate called Temple Alice, a home that never has enough heat, servants, horses, hunting, horsey and hunting ventures, dogs, and balls, and money from somewhere. Conflict between mother and daughter is at the heart of the novel, narrated in retrospect by Aroon in the late 1950s or early 1960s. But also the state of Aroon, a big girl, her weight often commented upon, her appetite, hungry for love, for acceptance, for being taken on her own terms. Satiric about a bygone time, when sex was not discussed, when behaving well was all, when harm wasn't acknowledged, but not at all soft or nostalgic. Marvelous characters, unlikeable, weak, mean, nearly good, and you can feel the chill in the place, in the relations between people.

[Liina · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Good Behaviour" is an exquisite read.
Aroon St Charles is a daughter of Irish upper class family, a "Big House" family in the country. She narrates the going on's of her life and boy, is it vile. The book is most often described as a dark comedy and it is indeed very funny at times but mostly it makes the little hair on your back rise and groan with frustration at Aroon's naivety. A distant mother, drunkard father,gay brother, many deaths...all masked under the icy Good Behaviour. Nothing is ever brought above the level of what is decent, not a flinching emotion not a tear not a raised voice.
Keane trusts her reader to "get" most of the undercurrents in the novel. I didn't get some on my first read and only after reading the reviews were there even more "so THAT'S why he said that!" moments. It is a very layered novel, funny but not "hahaha" funny. Dark and disturbing and in my opinion, very very sad. I am not even gonna mention that the prose itself great, which makes it quite a page turner as well.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this novel we are back in Molly Keane's usual milieu of shabby genteel, Anglo Irish, huntin', fishin', shootin' families. After a rather startling opening, Aroon, our narrator, looks back on her life, and what led her to that moment. She is an unreliable narrator, and clearly not altogether aware of what is really happening in her family. She is always kept on the outside, but desperately wanting to be important to someone. As with most of Keane's novels, the characters aren't particularly likeable, but they are entertaining, and this one is a darkly funny novel.

I did pity Aroon, but I found it quite hard to like her.

*Many thanks to Netgally and First I for a copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*

[Claire Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love, love, loved this book. Beautiful writing, sad story, great characters. Oh, just go and read it. The only thing I found odd was that Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift which I read last year, was so very similar, so similar that I'm surprised no one has pointed this out. Same time period, and similar things happen, although Swift's is set in England and this is Ireland. Made me feel a bit weird about Mothering Sunday.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The St Charles family are hit by hard and changing times in 1920's Ireland. These are the dying days of Anglo-Irish aristocracy where appearances must be preserved and emotions muted and controlled.

Events are narrated through the eyes of a child, Aroon St Charles, revealing subtle details which are confused and not understood by her, but as a reader reveal the truth she is too young and naive to grasp. Secrets, lies and tragedy surround the family as they each struggle with life events. Aroon's charismatic father is recovering from a war injury which causes feelings of discontent and failure, but bridges a gap between his children as he strives to face his vulnerability. Aroon's mother is cold, distant and shallow with a belittling habit which deepens the separation between mother and daughter.

It is a beautifully written novel with a tense, tight style, complex characterisation and moments of dark, black comedy. Tension is gradually heightened as economic worries and a lack of initiative begins to drain resolve. The perpetuation of good behaviour at all costs, along with a certain arrogance, adds a shocking and ironic twist.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a painful read this is! It’s a black comedy but one that I couldn’t laugh at because I was so horrified at the humiliation and miseries suffered by poor, naive, deluded Aroon.

Aroon and her brother, Hubert, the children of landed gentry, live in a large country house in Ireland. The book begins with the death of their mother which causes Aroon to look back over her life to tell us how she arrived at this point. As the penny dropped, by which I mean my realisation at how deluded was her interpretation of the behaviour of others, I felt so pained for her. She wasn’t entirely deluded. Deep down, she recognised that she was a large, fat girl who didn’t fit into her clothes or society: I know I’m big, but I’m a girl, I suppose, not a joke. I welled up at For a breath I was held in that time before love and trust had failed me. Anyone who has endured the feeling that they don’t fit in, the realisation that the behaviour and motivations of others are not always kind, will identify with Aroon.

This is my first Molly Keane. It was a BookBub offer and reading my Goodreads’ friends reviews, I knew I was in for an unusual read and it certainly is! I’m curious to read more Molly Keane as I doubt that this book gives me a good idea of her style. 4 stars for an intriguing, if often uncomfortable, read with a glorious twist at the end. For those of you familiar with it, I can’t get KD Lang’s Big Boned Gal out of my head!

[Annikky · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not you, Molly, it's me. You write brilliantly and you know humans all too well. It's just that very few things frustrate me as much as people who deliberately delude themselves, so I just couldn't stand Aroon. I know, it's all bleak humor, but I mostly found it just bleak, without anything to help me enjoy the book but your way with words and the genius balancing of everybody's unlikability - which is a lot, I admit. So wth your permission, I'll continue to admire Good Behaviour, but I cannot love it.

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

The protagonist of Good Behaviour is Iris Aroon St Charles, daughter of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, who grows up with her brother Hubert in ‘Temple Alice’ one of the ‘Big Houses’, built by an ancestor as his temporary residence until inheriting his titles and estates.

Now the title extinct and estates entirely dissipated, Temple Alice, after several generations as a dower house (a house intended as the residence of a widow), came to Mummie when her mother died. Papa farmed the miserably few hundred acres that remained of the property.

While the novel opens with a chapter when she is fifty-seven-years old at her mother’s death-bed, the remainder of the novel focuses on their life under the tutelage of a governess Mrs Brock up until her sudden departure through to her twenties when she is an unhappy, overweight, unmarried daughter without prospect, living a life of gross deception and delusion. Seeds of her discontent are sown early on, with a mother lacking in maternal feeling.

She simply did not want to know what was going on in the nursery. She had had us and she longed to forget the horror of it once and for all. She didn’t really like children; she didn’t like dogs either, and she had no enjoyment of food, for she ate almost nothing.

Animals, food and her brother are her consolation, her mother rarely responds even when Aroon reports that she thinks her baby brother is dead, she enquires where the staff are. Her father responds and inspires hope. She seeks out his company, a kind word, favour, he seeks comfort elsewhere.

We adored Papa, and his hopeless disapproval paralysed any scrap of confidence or pleasure we had ever had in ourselves or our ponies.

When Mrs Brock intervenes and with kindness and encouragement succeeds in endowing them with the necessary confidence, he turns away shaking his head.

In those days one did not quite admit the possibility of cowardice, even in young children. The tough were the ones who mattered; their courage was fitting and credible. A cowardly child was a hidden sore, and a child driven to admit hatred of his pony was something of a leper in our society. It appeared to Papa that Mrs Brock has rescued our honour and his credit.

An awkward teen she revels in her brother’s company and his friend Richard. The time the three spend together is the height of her happiness, little realising they too are indulging in ‘good behaviour’ masking an ulterior motive, using her as an alibi. Her self-deception knows no bounds.

Here, to my delight , Hubert and Richard danced with me in turn. I almost preferred dancing with Hubert because I loved showing off to Richard…I was fulfilled by them. I felt complete. There was no more to ask.

Aroon is constantly striving for connection and endlessly blind to reality, and when connection is possible, where genuine friendship might have a chance to flourish, she is locked into the conventions of her class that forbid it. She lacks empathy and is unaware of her own bitterness, so we have little sympathy for her predicament.

The family live in denial of their escalating debt, living beyond their means and incapable of doing anything for themselves. When her father returns from war injured, Aroon tries to get close to him and is thwarted once again. Without prospect of marriage, her mother closing her out, her father’s attentions elsewhere, she seems doomed.

And then a final twist.

And yet. The thirty years in-between the beginning and the end leave a lot more unsaid.

Selina Guiness in the Irish Times says Keane writes the most spectacularly “nasty” black comedies in Irish Big House fiction and Keane herself request her daughter to make the biography she wrote about her more like a novel adding, “I’m afraid you won’t be nasty enough.”

Perhaps it is this that so disturbs, I like a book in which a character can in some way redeem themself, can change or transform, ‘nasty, black comedies’ and characters that take pleasure in using their wounds as weapons against another isn’t entertaining for me, I am unable to wear a mask and pretend otherwise.

So utterly did I dislike the story and the characters, I questioned my understanding of the word behaviour, there wasn’t any good behaviour, even when the characters denied their true thoughts and said things to cover them, the behaviour remained appalling. The only exception being the maid Rose who kept the household going, working and caring her way through the narrative, shifting her alliances towards whichever household member required her attention.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

Aroon St. Charles is an unlovely character but pitiable in her naiveté (or was it willful ignorance?). As she narrates the tale of her life, imagining herself to be, if not the heroine, the sympathetic protagonist, what clearly comes across to the reader is a different picture than she desires. For example, Aroon tells herself & the reader that Richard Massingham loved her. It is obvious to the reader (and indeed to several of the other characters) that instead Richard and Aroon's brother Hubert were having a homosexual affair.

Aroon, as she says multiple times, is big. It took me some time to decipher this code - she isn't just tall but tall and obese. Whether this is the cause of her inept searching for love & security or the result of not finding that love from her mother growing up is unclear to me. Certainly there are many indications in the book of an overwhelming Electra complex in Aroon. Her life in Anglo-Irish society in the years both before and after WW1 is extremely restricted. She doesn't go to school (she has a governess) and she is discouraged from associating with the children of the 'lesser' classes so basically she only has her brother as a companion. Since her mother is emotionally distant, she relies on her father and brother for love. As she grows up, her belief that she correctly understands social and emotional situations is increasingly laughable. Aroon has had a very sheltered upbringing but she never seems to feel the need to spread her wings, experience more of life, so it is hard to place all the blame of her ignorance on her upbringing.

Another example of her self-delusion involves the relationship between Rose & her father after he has a stroke. There are several very transparent clues that Rose has been, to use vulgar parlance, giving the Major a hand job. Aroon even walks in on this once but says (believes?) that Rose was massaging the Major's cold foot! Even Aroon must know the location of a foot - it must have been obvious that the activity was occurring a bit higher than that!

While I can feel a certain amount of pity for the child and young woman Aroon was, the opening scene of the book makes it hard for me to like Aroon. Most of the book is a flashback, giving Aroon's view of life & events leading to a time some 25 years before the opening chapter. Her insistence on having things her own way in that first chapter as well as some of the events in it make her decidedly unappealing. Having finished the book and then reread that first chapter, the idea of her controlling behaviour with her mother lasting 25 years is appalling!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for the satire and irony.

Poor Aroon with her hot-to-trot daddy and ice queen mummy. The story begins with Rose, the family retainer, accusing Aroon of having deliberately poisoned her mother; if so, brava! She and another Anglo Lady are portrayed as almost being allergic to the locals. Mummy hides the bills in a drawer, focusing on what she might get with the money to beautify her own life instead.

Daddy serves as a lord of the decaying manor figure. As long as there are horses, and money to keep those up, it's all good. He'd probably be called a sexual compulsive today, but as long as Mummy doesn't have to Do It, again it's all good. The Dead nanny who hovers over the story underscores all that.

One of the servants, I don't believe it was the Nanny, provides Aroon with her only sex ed instruction, a graphic mention ending with "... and you won't like it!" At the risk of a spoiler, poor clueless Aroon spends her life devoted to her "lover" blind to the pathos of her ignorance to the end.

Setting is described incredibly well, without laying on excessive detail. My favorite was the night Aroon met a funeral guest at the station. In true farce style, Aroon never actually got to attend the funeral. Interestingly, she does mention that manor's Anglican chapel is only used for christenings, weddings and funerals; no call for services.

Aoife McMahon does an awesome job with the narration, both Anglo and Irish!

Highly recommended!

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aroon St Charles, unfortunate daughter of a declining aristocratic family, is a doubly unreliable narrator. She’s selective in what she chooses to relate, and also ignorant of facts that are nevertheless plain to the reader (her brother’s relationship with his ‘best friend’, who poses as Aroon’s suitor to avoid suspicion; her father’s many affairs). As such it’s never really clear how much she actually knows. About Hubert and Richard she is pathetically oblivious, but the opening scene – in which she indirectly murders her mother by contriving to feed her rabbit – positions her as a schemer. What never wavers is the code of ��good behaviour’, the adherence to mores and etiquette that comes above all else, including, and perhaps especially, happiness. A story that certainly puts the ‘dark’ in ‘darkly comic’; not a happy book but it does makes one glad, at least, not to be a St Charles.

[Trish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not my cup of tea. I couldn't even figure out if it was supposed to be funny or just sad.

I definitely seem to have different tastes to the rest of my book club (although that said, most of them didn't like any of the characters in this, either, so maybe we were in sync this time).

It also supports my view that I have different tastes to the Man Booker Prize committee, as well - I'd never have nominated this.

[Arlette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I shall be careful when referring to "warming feet"....... hate to get that mis-interpreted:)

[Troy Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly brilliant. Molly Keane just got better with age.

[A. Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a solid novel that grimly marches through its story, jaw firmly set, while onlookers watch in disbelief--how can this plot be sustained by these characters? But it is sustained because that's what these characters do, in spite of their fraying, worn-thin elbows. There's almost no one to like in this book, not even Aroon, who narrates. We can't believe how thick she is, how deluded, but Keane doesn't let her story be simplistic. Aroon has been so isolated, kept in ignorance, that she knows nothing, perhaps refuses to know anything. Come on--Rose is not "warming his feet" when her hand is under the Major's blankets. At other times, we want to shout, "For the love of God, he's GAY." We can't be entirely frustrated with Aroon, though, because her mother is a horrible person, who with tremendous decorum--it's all about good behaviour, really--engages in relentless verbal abuse of her daughter. I ended up filled with pity for Aroon, and in a cheeky twist, thanks to the Major (whose serial infidelities become more and more forgivable--maybe), Aroon wins. This is more than the story of a calcified family. It's a look at a fossilized stratum of Irish society, watching as it disintegrates.

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a kind of comedy of manners and a send-up of the class in which Molly Keane was raised.. It's the story of Aroon St. Charles, the daughter of one of those families following Irish independence trying to hold onto their gentrified lives while juggling exhausted resources with aplomb and studied disregard. Aroon's father is crippled during the Great War, her mother too distant and cold to bring her along in social naturalness. Aroon progresses in the big house on her own, as she thinks she should, practicing the good behavior of her rank until she learns good behavior isn't quite proper. Amy Gentry's "Introduction" tells us sociopathic callousness is the best behavior. This fine novel is made even more interesting by a 1st chapter which acts as a kind of coda for the novel. I enjoyed Good Behaviour very much.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done satire. See this review for more.

[Gabrielle Dubois · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book without knowing what it was about, and very little commitment to read it because of the cover: a painting by Meredith Frampton, Portrait of a young Woman - The woman in the portrait looks pinched, scornful, stuck.
Anyway, I opened this book anyway, because I was on vacation abroad, - see my blog post Ellen versus Warriors - and it was the only book I had taken with me that I had left to read! I must say that the first few pages have put me off - none of the characters are sympathetic, empathetic or kind. They are contemptuous, self-righteous, restricted, uninteresting and I had only one desire: to close the door of their house I had entered to leave them between them, and never to see them again! But when you only have one book left and you love to read..... you keep going!

But I don't like these vile characters, full of themselves, who don't know where they're going and don't seek to know it; characters who can't stand the happiness of others because they’re unable make their own. Characters who hopes that others will be unhappy so that they can get stuck in their own discomfort:
"I had the satisfaction of knowing that she was less happy and therefore that I was more important."
Then, as the reading progresses, as it is well done and well written, I end up letting myself go, although the characters remain bogged down in their inactive miserableness:
"The reason I like the disaster of others is because they evoke my understanding and sympathy in a way that their successes never do."

The heroine's father is immobilized in bed, she takes care of him. So I think: Ah! Finally a bit of altruism! But she thinks:
"Every day my heart was calmer and more comforted because of the importance I had taken."

The mother of the heroine must save money, well, it is commendable, except when "Her final objective was penance for all of us. She wanted everyone to suffer."

And that poor heroine whom she and her mother think is too tall and too fat. Still in her saving measures, - after having spent money like water all her life and without ever having any idea of the value of money or the price of anything - the mother decides to almost stop heating the house. I would like to point out that the story is set in Ireland, a country I love but whose winters are... let’s say wet and fresh! 😊 Aroon, the narrator, tries to fight back against her mother, but: "The way my mother looked at me, I guessed she was dying to add: fat people don't feel the cold."

Yes, the young Aroon had parents who should never have been parents. Yes, she has a physique that does not meet the beauty criteria of her time. Yes, she was not loved.
But she has what we all have: the choice!
While she finally has the opportunity to make a choice for herself, which should be to take her freedom; in my opinion, she does the wrong thing: she maintains this silly ideal of good behaviour no matter what dignity from which it follows that she does not allow herself to be happy:
“We kept our heads above the morass, stifled screaming despairs only by the exercise of good behaviour.”

For me, this choice is a renunciation of life out of weakness. And I have a lot of difficulty accepting such behaviour, I'll tell you why:
A person who refuses to face reality and face life does not just make himself unhappy. It also puts people around it in suffering. Either we, out of love, feel obliged to help her manage her life, or the way she manages her life has a negative impact on those around her.
So, no, definitely, no, I didn't like Molly Keane's characters, including the young Aroon. I only enjoy reading stories, real or fictional, about characters who raise themselves and raise me with them.

So why did I finally and despite everything like this book? The fault lies with the great writer Molly Keane: her writing is a marvel of distilled subtleties, of seemingly harmless reflections that say so much.
And when I tell you that it's very easy to read, you'll have no excuse not to read this book!