Good Behaviour: A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick – Booker Prize Gems (Virago Modern Classics)

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It might remind us of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, that too is something dressed as another by the story being told. You have all the right to smile and laugh at the stories but remember that these stories are being used in our daily lives as well and we have to be careful to separate what we are actually seeing from the stories being 'told'. I really wish I had written this book. It’s a tragi-comedy set in Ireland after the First World War. A real work of craftsmanship, where the heroine is also the narrator, yet has no idea what is going on. You read it with mounting horror and hilarity as you begin to grasp her delusion.

I think this is what you would describe as a book for grown-ups - and yes there is plenty of sex. But what is interesting here is Keane's in-depth knowledge of her main character, Aroon St. Charles. I read Good Behaviour with the help of my friend, Canadian Reader and I think she would agree, that neither of us liked or felt an iota of sympathy for Aroon until we had finished the book and stepped away from its horrors. Diana Athill: Bad Behaviour is so clever, it’s mind-blowing…There are moments when the reader pauses to congratulate him or herself for being astute enough to twig what is really going on…It is as though we are seeing events unfold which we can then interpret for ourselves, and the effect of this is much more poignant than explication would be.In her teenage years she spent much of her time in the Perry household in Woodruff, County Tipperary. Here she befriended the two children of the house, Sylvia and John Perry. She later collaborated with John in writing a number of plays. Among them was Spring Meeting, directed by John Gielgud in 1938, and one of the hits of the West End that year. She and Gielgud became lifelong friends. [2] Career [ edit ] David Higham Client Entry". Archived from the original on 1 September 2006 . Retrieved 16 September 2006.

for a woman to read a book, let alone write one was viewed with alarm: I would have been banne This was an interval in his recovery; later in the year he was to have his wooden leg fitted. In the meantime he must rest, he must eat. He did both, and drank as well, growing every day more irritable and rather fatter. He followed Mummie about the garden at first; he even sat in the studio and watched her painting, after he had absorbed the small amount of racing news in the daily papers. All the time he seemed sadly unoccupied, as indeed he was. He couldn’t ride. He fell into the river when he went fishing. Long afterwards I knew things were on his mind then. Reeking, new, they must have been terrible. He had shot Ollie Reilly as he lay mutilated and dying; when he talked to Rose, Ollie’s death seemed quite enviable, here and gone, out like a light. I stood about, smiling, compressed, submerged in politeness; aching in my isolation; longing to be alone; to be away; to be tomorrow's person For me, this choice is a renunciation of life out of weakness. And I have a lot of difficulty accepting such behaviour, I'll tell you why:The mother of the heroine must save money, well, it is commendable, except when "Her final objective was penance for all of us. She wanted everyone to suffer."

Our water supply was meagre and my grandfather had deflected a considerable quantity of it to a pond on which, in the shelter of a grove of rhododendrons, he loved to row himself about. It was his escape from the land agent” Birdie deserves her escape with Walter, a visiting manservant, and just as she is lost to Angel, so are both Angel’s children. Unpredictably, Oliver departs with Julian’s fiancée, Sally. The novel’s dramatic conclusion, when each couple sails away, maroons and unmothers Angel. Julian’s leave-taking stopped me short: ‘You were quite perfect till I was twelve’. She has the wit to counter: ‘I liked you best at two.’A reviewer in The New York Times book review in August 1991 stated that Good Behaviour may well become "a classic among English Novels". It connected her in a personal way with the famous London editor, Diana Athill, who identified strongly with Keane after reading it, insisted on editing it herself, later calling the book "mindblowingly clever." [11]