[Good Behaviour is an] atmospheric novel … ruthless in its black humour, irony, clarity of conception and execution. It is also profoundly sad. To tell the plot would spoil its effect, for there is a very real intellectual pleasure in store for the reader who gradually begins to realize the different planes upon which the story moves: there is the illusion of Anglo-Irish life with its well-brought-up silences, its refusal to face the facts of life. These include money, politics, religion and sex. And so the characters move in a world of faded elegance and damp decay, of luxury and extreme discomfort, taking their horses very seriously indeed. This is the world of the big house in decline and disintegration. It has a long literary history…. [And] now Molly Keane has joined the tradition…. [Good Behaviour] captures the impish quality of the humour of the Anglo-Irish and takes a...