This is mindblowingly clever – and the best thing about it is that it is never clever for the sake of cleverness. She makes Aroon, her narrator, tell a long and complicated story without ever understanding what that story is about. With Good Behaviour she achieved something quite extraordinary. I think the shape her modesty took was simply not feeling that being a very good writer was all that important. Molly was essentially modest, but like all good writers she knew deep down that she was good. She simply did not feel that being a good writer was all that importantīut with Good Behaviour it was instantly clear to me that she ought to step forth as herself, and her own hesitation about it was very slight. How I sympathised! She knew deep down she was good. “Brainy” was why Molly published all her early novels under a pseudonym. “Oh, you’re the brainy one, aren’t you?” said one of my partners at a hunt ball – and he might as well have accused me of reeking of halitosis. Both of us started out “horsey”, and both had learned to flinch at the word “brainy”. East Anglia and Ireland are chalk and cheese, but there are still resemblances between big-house families (particularly if short of cash) and both of us came from such families. Those last four pages are pure gold.What had moved me to such bad behaviour was not only the novel’s quality, it was also the extent to which I shared Molly’s background. She is not really a sympathetic character (remember the first paragraph?) but yet one can’t help feel that she deserves some sort of break for once in her life.Īnd then the ending happens.
But she holds herself proud, based on her mother’s training of always good behavior, above all, until a disastrous attempt at attending a neighbor’s dinner dance completely does her in. And unfortunately, she has fallen in love with her late brother’s very dear friend, and girl, that’s just never going to happen, not that she has any clue why not. Not at all marriage material among her peers.
But most disastrously, she is a large, big-boned and awkward girl, born into the flapper era. Her brother is killed in an accident just as he is coming of age. They are down to slowly selling off the horses and avoiding the bills with much hand-waving and relying on the fading good will of the locals. Well, now, that seems a little cold-blooded, no? Ah, but richly deserved.Īroon was been born into the impoverished Irish gentry. Not to let such a delicious treat go to waste, Aroon finishes it off. Charles can’t abide even the scent of the stuff, and promptly keels over and dies. Charles, she has just served a lovely luncheon of delicate rabbit’s broth to her very elderly mother.
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