Fiction & Poetry, Modern & Contemporary Fiction
Good Behaviour

Good Behaviour: A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick – Booker Prize Gems

Paperback Published on: 23/01/2025
£10.99
8 reviews
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Bookseller Reviews

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Good Behaviour
pitch black comedy
Molly Keane was a wonderful writer, elegant, intelligent and precise. She paints a complete and complex picture of a family, their friends and lovers and a... READ MORE
Elizabeth Starnes at Deansgate
Good Behaviour
It should have won the Booker
I love Molly Keane, she was my gateway into Irish literature, fiction by women, Virago Modern Classics and more. Her earlier books reflect the dying days o... READ MORE
Hayley at Leicester Highcross

Synopsis

We kept our heads above the morass, stifled screaming despairs only by the exercise of Good Behaviour.

Behind the gates of Temple Alice, the aristocratic St Charles family is sinking into a state of decaying grace. Aroon, the unlovely daughter of the house, silently longs for affection - which she receives neither from her icy mother nor her hunting-obsessed father. The fierce forces of sex, money, jealousy and love seem stifled by the rules of good behaviour. But no crumbling codes of conduct can save the members of the St Charles family from their own dark secrets and repressed cruelties . . .

Introduced by Maggie O'Farrell

'Molly Keane is a mistress of wicked comedy' VOGUE

'Dark, complex, engaging . . . a wonderful tour de force' MARIAN KEYES

'I have read and re-read Molly Keane more, I think, than any other writer. Nobody else can touch her as a satirist, tragedian and dissector of human behaviour' MAGGIE O'FARRELL

'I really wish I had written this book...You read it with mounting horror and hilarity' HILARY MANTEL

Publisher information

  • Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
  • ISBN: 9780349019604
  • Number of pages: 304
  • Dimensions: 198 x 126 x 24 mm
  • Weight: 240g
  • Languages: English

Customer Reviews

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Good Behaviour
Between The Covers - Series 3 Book
Well before this book had been selected for Between The Covers Series 3 I had never heard of it or indeed of Molly Keane, it's author. This is from the boo... READ MORE
Fiona Sharp
Good Behaviour
Weirdly wonderful horror story of human behaviour.
A good read. If as a reader, you need to like the main protagonist in what you're reading, this ain't the book for you. If you need, at least, someone in ... READ MORE
Norman Meharry
Good Behaviour
The perfect dark comedy
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 del... READ MORE
KimG9
Good Behaviour
The Suffocating Life of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy
Good Behaviour is an excoriating portrait of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy at the beginning of the twentieth century. Representatives of a dwindling and deep... READ MORE
Brian Keaney
Good Behaviour
Absolute perfection - classic Irish country house cautionary tale.
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... READ MORE
SG
Good Behaviour
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 b... READ MORE
Huttson Lo