I thought I'd like this more than I did. Usually I love an unreliable narrator but in this case it was quite miserable reading. The unreliability comes from Aroon's lack of experience and understanding, not through any purposeful layer of deception in her telling the story of her family.

She grew up so sheltered she can't read between the lines and see through "good behaviour", and as such reading her life of both recognised and unrecognised humiliations was more sad than entertaining.

That said she's also so snobbish in only entertaining friendship from the right class of people, really no better than her awful family, that she never held my sympathy for long. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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! ( )

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 my understanding of the book was expanded and enriched by reading and discussing it with a friend.

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. ( )