It was wonderful to discover such a wickedly entertaining novel by an Irish author I was completely unfamiliar with. This is a genuinely funny book, albeit more than a little bit unsettling at times too. It's a fascinating insight into the decline of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy at the turn of the Twentieth Century and a audacious portrayal of family life at it's most dysfunctional.

The book follows the story of Aroon St. Charles, socially awkward and forced by society and status to play the part of a good daughter born into a good family, irrespective of the true character or immoral behaviour of those around her.

Molly Keane brilliantly captures the duality of this world, where image is more important than reality and inconvenient truths can be ignored as long as ones outward behaviour aligns with convention. It would be easy to feel sorry for Aroon except we discover very early in the book that she is just as multilayered, with good behaviour masking a much darker side.

Perceptive, unsettling and truly funny, It's brilliant that to see a book like this re-released for a new audience to enjoy.

Another great choice by Virago to rediscover sometimes forgotten female authors. This offers a fascinating insight into the family life of a 20th century Anglo-Irish estate exploring class and family dynamics through the eyes of an unreliable narrator. At times dark and tense, it is not always clear what is actually going on, so it requires some concentration and realisation that the characters are not going to be likeable.

Good Behaviour by Molly Keane was a thoroughly enjoyable read, offering a sharp yet unsettling portrait of the decline of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy through the eyes of the tragically deluded Aroon St. Charles. Keane’s darkly comic prose brilliantly exposes the repression, cruelty, and rigid adherence to social niceties that mask deep emotional dysfunction. Aroon longs to be at the centre of her family’s world, yet the reader quickly grasps what she cannot—that she consistently misinterprets the dynamics and true nature of those around her. Wry, perceptive, and unsettlingly funny, this was an immensely entertaining read, and I look forward to exploring more of Keane’s work.

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.

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

What a terrific book! Aroon St Charles, overweight and uncomprehending daughter of the house, Temple Alice, an Anglo Irish pile teetering on bankruptcy in the early part of the Twentieth Century. What to highlight: Aroon herself, whom we might pity, but for the fact that she kills her mother in the opening chapter; her mother, a butterfly, rather a gadfly, who torments her daughter with exquisite cruelty; her promiscuously unfaithful father; her homosexual brother and his friend, employing the unsuspecting Aroon as cover for their own relationship.

'Good behaviour' is the denial of emotion, denial of the truth, the observance of decorum which denies reality. In this book, genuine bad behaviour is the norm. It's a black comedy, a satire, for a world now nearly extinct; but human nature doesn't change. It's as relevant now as when it is set.

A great novel, made even better by the sensitive introduction by Maggie O'Farrell.

Clever, funny, knowing

Just vibes 4⭐
Plot 4.5⭐
Characters 4.5⭐
Writing style 3.5⭐
Readability 2.75⭐
Likelihood to recommend 3.5⭐

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the digital ARC!

I think I'd describe this as having the feel of a dark Nancy Mitford. I felt it didn't quite capture my interest - the plot had very little going on and I didn't connect to the characters. It definitely has the hallmarks of a story composed in a different time and this was perhaps not as interesting to me.

Many thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Battle of wills of manners and murder
—
In a tour de force, Keane takes a slice of Anglo-Irish history, her own formative years of the 1920s, and highlights the inherent contradictions of ‘good behaviour,’’ of the accepted social mores particular to the upper middle classes of the place and time. Thwarted on all sides from having a ‘normal’ life, Aroon maintains the manners that she is expected to adhere to, all the while doing what she must to be satisfied, opening at the end of her tale with a murder.

With an unremitting focus on the main character of Aroon. Keane imbues the whole with horror and glee. Aroon could be either a tragic anti-heroine or a psychopathic monster, but she cannot be blamed for being either what her family, her society and her times force her to become.

As vital and timely today as when it was first published: five stars.

a classic for a reason. poetic, cutting, a portrait of a terrible family in crisis, with flowing backstories, overlapping perspectives, and the crushing sense that things will end badly. like sinking into a rich chocolate cake. one for readers of 'succession' or anyone who thought 'pride and prejudice' was too lighthearted.

Her writing has been described as veering from horror to hilarity. Good behaviour in this world of decaying gentry life, is being able to maintain a position of superiority and selfishness in the face of dwindling resources. There is no money to pay the servants or the butcher, but life goes on relentlessly for the St Charles family, in delusion and not a little eccentricity. The lack of warmth seems to be handed down from mother to daughter, who is a glutton for food in the absence of love. The master of the house is of the hunting, shooting and fishing sort, and the callous ignorance displayed by all for other’s feelings is so astonishing it is funny. A young man comes to stay, who is obviously more in tune with the brother, but will be an imagined love interest for ever more to the delusional daughter. The cast of characters is a delight in the way they are drawn, and paint a wonderful picture of an imperfect aristocracy on the slippery slope of decline.

By turns blackly funny and seriously tragic, Molly Keane's story of the descent of an aristocratic Irish family into debt and destruction, focused on the plain, overweight, self-deluding Aroon, is a tour de force. Aroon's total lack of awareness of her love-object's true nature, and her relationship with her brother, ice-cold mother and spendthrift, Lothario father are both tragic and laughable. I shall be recommending this book to my bookclub - and anyone else I can persuade to read it. Five stars!

Absolute perfection. I've never got around to reading Keane before but I love Nancy Mitford, Diana Athill and Caroline Blackwood so this cautionary tale of a family decaying in splendour was exactly what I was hoping for. The dark humour to be elicited from Aroon's spectacular naivety, her tragic misreading of her relationship with Richard and the toxic mix of entitlement and a total lack of commonsense made the story impossible to put down. I loved the grotesquery of Mummie and Papa, the unreliable narration of Aroon and the sense of doom throughout the book. Reading it on Kindle, obviously I didn't have the benefit of the design of the new Virago edition but the cover artwork is stunning and I think enhances the contents.

Good Behaviour is an excoriating portrait of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy at the beginning of the twentieth century. Representatives of a dwindling and deeply resented class, Molly Keane’s characters exist in a world set apart from the overwhelming majority of native Irish who feature only as servants. Their lives are an endless round of horse-riding and fox-hunting; intellectual pursuits of any kind are discouraged; displays of emotion are not to be indulged; even grief at the death of a loved one must be discreetly muted.

The narrator and central character, Aroon, has all the cards tacked against her. A “big girl” at a time when it is fashionable to be thin, entirely ignorant about sex, she falls in love with her brother’s best friend whom the reader can see perfectly well is homosexual. Indeed, the reader understands everything that Aroon is describing far better than she does herself.

It’s not a feel-good read – we watch as Aroon’s personality is warped by her suffocating circumstances - but this is literature, doing its job, exploring the darkness, finding empathy in the stalest of environments.

Good Behaviour proved to be the deliciously dark and funny tragicomedy I needed right now. I gobbled it up like cheddar and onion crisps, it was such a delight. Written in the 80s, I wonder how I never heard of this before? It was hilarious and sad in equal measure. Well, maybe not 'equal' as it was far funnier than I could have guessed.

In Good Behaviour we dwell amongst the Irish landed gentry in the early 20th century. The St. Charles family estate is in steady decline, with money in short supply, but that is too vulgar to mention, I'm sure. Aroon tells the tale of her quirky family and at first we readers might mistake her for being painfully naive, which she may well be. Or, is she very aware and just too polite to call a spade a spade? Regardless, the story that unfolds is comedy gold of the high society sort.

Aroon is a girl at a disadvantage. In the 20s girls are meant to be small and athletic and she is anything but. A big girl, she is shunned by her mother and in desperate search for affection and approval from her father and brother, mainly. As her story, and that of her family, unfolds we learn more of what they get up to and Aroon's unique view on events.

Pure genius, I will look for more books written by Molly Keane and am so thankful for Virago Modern Classics and their reprint of 'classics with bite'. Good Behaviour is, certainly, the perfect example of such a work of fiction. I hope you agree.

I had wanted to read Good Behaviour for ages but tbh I wasn't keen on it! Published in the 80s and about a posh Irish family in the early 20th century, I think it was definitely a case of me and not the book: it was just a bit too weird and oblique for me, and I was never excited at the thought of picking it up again.

Well written but not engaging. It was so alien to modern times. The famiky were of a different class too. The ending was good though.

This book has been on my TBR for years. I hear others recommending it, I read about how wonderful it is. But, so many books, so little time. When I saw a new addition had come out with a foreword by Maggie O'Farrell, an author I love, I decided finally to read it. I loved it from the start. Witty and clever, written by a safe pair of hands. When Molly Keane describes the house the protagonist, Aroon, is living in with windows that "lean out over the deep anchorage of the boat cove like bosoms on an old ship's figurehead" I laughed out loud and was hooked. The light and lively tale hooks you in, and holds you as it slowly gets darker and more horrific, and gripping you like an accident you cannot look away from. It's so well written, it was nominated for the booker prize, and the story so captivating I can see why this book is still being recommended and republished over forty years since it was released. I can't really think of any book lover that wouldn't love having this gifted to them.

Mainly told by the character, Aroon, this is her story.
Aroon has a damaging upbringing, is not conventionally beautiful, and has a hard time seeing the reality as it is.
Over the course of many decades, Aroon and her family experience many misfortunes.
The novel ends with a sort of closure.
I wanted to like this more than I did, and I still think it is an important book.
Perhaps if I had read it 15-20 years ago, I would have found it more interesting. Unlikeable characters, petty behaviours, problems of the more advantaged (seemingly more advantaged, though). The satire fell short,
Plot 3 stars
Characterisation 2.5 stars
Writing 4 stars
Overall enjoyment 3 stars

I didn’t enjoy this one unfortunately! I found the writing to be very flowery, almost overwritten for the sake of it at some times. The plot was dull and I couldn’t connect to any of the characters, they were all unlikeable especially Aroon. They all seemed hell bent on self sabotage and it was difficult and boring to read about. A very sad story with even more sad characters.

Good Behaviour by Molly Keane is a brilliantly sharp and darkly funny novel. It masterfully exposes the rigid expectations and cruelties of Anglo-Irish society through the unreliable and somewhat tragic voice of Aroon St. Charles. The novel’s satire and subtle horror make it a standout, and its portrayal of repression, snobbery, and family dysfunction is both chilling and compelling.