As one who knew something of the period of Molly Keane's Good Behaviour I was astonished to find there no hint of the Irish "Troubles," the Rising of 1916, the later civil war, or the toll of burned-down houses. Was this an instance of the Anglo-Irish, indeed of the general Irish habit of euphemism and evasion? What, of course, is most real to Molly Keane is the game of manners, the instinctive desire to keep boring reality at bay yet to be stoical about the cost.

The Victorian and Edwardian codes stayed on far longer in southern Ireland than in England. Good Behaviour … is less a novel than a novelized autobiography which exposes the case of Anglo-Irish women, especially in the person of the narrator, a shy, large, ungainly, horsy girl….

Molly Keane's real novel, substantial and ingeniously organized, is the more recent Time After Time…. Now good behavior...