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Namn enligt folkbokföringen: Keane, Mary Nesta
Skrine, Mary Nesta (birth)
Andra namn: Farrell, M. J.
Födelsedag: 1904-07-20
Avled: 1996-04-22
Begravningsplats: Church of Ireland Church, Ardmore, County Waterford, Ireland
Kön: female
Nationalitet: Ireland
Födelseort: Ballyrankin, County Kildare, Ireland
Dödsort: Ardmore, County Waterford, Ireland
Bostadsorter: Ballyrankin, County Wexford, Ireland
Ardmore, County Waterford, Ireland
Utbildning: boarding school
Yrken: novelist
writer
author
playwright
Relationer: O'Neill, Moira (mother)
Phipps, Sally (daughter)
Organisationer: Aosdána (member)
Agent: Georgia Glover (David Higham Associates)
Kort biografi: Molly Keane was an Anglo-Irish writer born and raised in Ireland, in a hunting, fishing family. Her mother was a minor poet. She was articulate and well-informed although having received little education from governesses and boarding school. She began writing anonymously, as it would have been held disgraceful for a young lady of her time to have her name appear in print. She wrote 10 novels between 1928 and 1952, and four plays, with John Perry, by 1961, highly regarded by critic James Agate. After her husband Robert Keane died at the age of 36, she stopped writing for many years, then made her comeback with Good Behaviour (1981), which became a literary sensation. Her extraordinary novels are beloved for their black comedy and the dialogue with which she brought to life the (now gone) privileged world in which she grew up -- often involving genteel poverty and loneliness. She died in 1996, leaving two daughters.

Medlemmar

Diskussioner

Folio Archives 285: Good Behaviour by Molly Keane 2012 i Folio Society Devotees (augusti 2022)

Recensioner

Good Behaviour (New York Review Books Classics) av Molly Keane

The St Charles family, like many other members of the Ascendancy in 1920s Ireland, find themselves on the brink of an economic and cultural abyss. There's no more money to maintain their crumbling Georgian manor, and the rules of Good Behaviour constrain them from talking openly about all the ways they are horrible to one another or about how the world is changing around them. (Neither Independence nor the Civil War are so much as mentioned her.)

Good Behaviour is narrated by the daughter of the family, Aroon, who is naive and passive, an inveterate observer who can't or won't see what's happening under her nose, an unlikable character who occasionally stirs the reader's sympathy. Molly Keane had a keen eye for all the ways that families can hurt one another, and for the acute, cringing horror of awkward social situations—I spent much of my time reading the book with my shoulders up around my ears in vicarious humiliation. The dark humour on display here is poisonous, congealing, unfailingly bleak—tapping into that vein of Irish humour that refuses the possibility of hope.… (mer)

Flaggad

siriaeve | 19 andra recensioner | Nov 6, 2023 |

Loving Without Tears av M.J. Farrell

Loving Without Tears published in 1951 is a romantic novel which sounds outdated today and probably did when it was originally published.
Angel a matriarchal figure is eagerly awaiting the return of her eldest son Julian to the family castle somewhere on the Irish coast. He has been an airplane fighter pilot based in Italy near the end of the second world war. Waiting at home with Angel are Slaney her daughter and Tiddley a cousin noted for her shortness of stature. Oliver is a land agent who also lives in the castle as does the cook and servant Birdie who used to be the children's nanny. Angel has prided herself in managing the lives of her family and looks forward to having them around her again. Julian however arrives home with an American Lady Mrs Wood a widow some ten years older than him whom he intends to marry. Angel has work to do: she needs to break up her son's romance, stop Slaney becoming infatuated with Colonel Chris, ensure that Birdie does not run off with Mrs Wood's manservant and get rid of Tiddley's piano.

The majority of the story takes place on the day of the arrival of Julian. The dialogue for the most part is excruciating, with Angel breaking out into french when she wants to soften her blows. Angel is the only grown up in the room until Mrs Wood arrives; most of the others acting like naive half-wits. Did wealthy people really talk and act in this fashion I wonder, as most of it sounds like a badly acted kitchen sink drama. The only saving grace for this novel is some fine descriptive writing of the castle buildings, the gardens and the little boat docking area. 2 stars.… (mer)

Flaggad

baswood | 4 andra recensioner | Oct 11, 2023 |

Good Behaviour

A dark comedy, set in the Anglo Irish 1930's, narrated by Aroon an unattractive and generally unlikable character who misunderstands almost everything going on around her with a startling naivete. Written from the POV of this character, the author shows not tells us Aroon's world and worldview, and maintains this method for the whole book, which in itself is quite a feat.
Enormously good fun to debate with my book club pals.

Flaggad

celerydog | 19 andra recensioner | Sep 27, 2023 |

Good behaviour av Molly Keane

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!… (mer)