Why a Booktrail?
A multilayered portrait of a young girl coming of age.
Good Behaviour
What you need to know before your trail
Good Behaviour is a great book, at turns funny and heartbreaking, with a searing dark humour, a keen satirical eye and a warm beating heart.
The novel is one long cri de coeur of Aroon St Charles, daughter and resident of the ‘big house’ Temple Alice, where she lives with her distant parents, beloved brother and assorted servants and where the only thing frowned upon is not adhering to the rules of good behaviour. Discretion is valued above all else in Aroon’s world, it is always necessary to do the right thing.
Travel Guide
Limerick
Aroon St Charles, aged 57, tells us of the first thirty years or so of her life – of her birth before WW1 into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family
Life here is hard – her mother is cold and unloving and her father although fond of her, is busy elsewhere with his life and work. Aroon is therefore forced to look for love elsewhere and she finds comfort in Mrs Brock, the governess, a lovely character who had come to teach her and brother Hubert.
Mrs Brock has previously worked for the Massingham family, friends of the St Charles family, and she tells stories of the Massinghams, which the children love to here. It turns out Mrs Brock was dismissed from her post for ” making the boys sensitive to poetry” when they should have been engaged in more manly pursuits such as horses and sports
Rose, the cook, then becomes the central character in a story that delves down deep in to the secrets of an Irish family – upstairs and down.
Booktrailer Review
Good Behaviour is beautifully written book and perfectly balances moments of bleak shock and sadness with sharp, dark humour. It is, at times, incredibly funny.
It is this balance that makes Good Behaviour such a wonderful novel. The ending is a tense as any thriller when the roles between mother and daughter spin on an axis and the final lines drive you right back to the beginning again, to re-read and seek out gems you may have missed.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Good Behaviour
Author/Guide: Molly Keane Destination: Ireland Departure Time: 1980s
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