Good Behaviour was a dark, subtle, savagely amusing study of the decline of a well-born Irish family after the First World War.

The members of that family destroyed each other, and that they did so with all due courtesy made the destruction no less cruel. But compared to the Swifts in Time After Time, the St. Charleses of Good Behaviour were angels of kindness.

Time After Time describes a family already ruined…. They more or less dislike each other, and yet they remain together, sniping and bickering and scratching out some shabby kind of life for themselves….

The novel's pacing is perfect. Roughly the first one-third of the story sets us within the routine at Duraghglass as it has been practiced without change for years…. Each person has a particular interest, and each (it is hinted) a shameful secret.

There's a point at which the family's stasis becomes...