There must be many others like this, and I’d like to hear from other GR folks what books they can think of that come to mind regarding this genre – unreliable narrators of a story who tell their side of things and it’s distorted from what really happened. This is one of those books where you really cannot trust the narrator. Well, at least some folks had the good sense to put it on the shortlist. Others on shortlist were Ian McEwan (The Comfort of Strangers) and Doris Lessing (The Sirian Experiments). The book was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize which was eventually won by Salman Rushdie with “Midnight’s Children”. What did I just read? This book has been around for many years…where was I? Under a rock? She is buried beside the Church of Ireland church, almost in the centre of the village.

The novel was warmly received and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.Īfter the death of her husband, Molly Keane moved to Ardmore, County Waterford, a place she knew well, and lived there with her two daughters, Sally and Virginia, until she died in 1996. In 1981 Good Behaviour came out under her own name the manuscript, which had languished in a drawer for many years, was lent to a visitor, the actress Peggy Ashcroft, who encouraged Keane to publish it. Her husband died suddenly in 1946, and following the failure of a play she published nothing for twenty years. Between 19, she wrote 11 novels, and some of her earlier plays, under the pseudonym M.J. She used her married name for her later novels, several of which ( Good Behaviour, Time After Time) have been adapted for television. She married Bobby Keane, one of a Waterford squirearchical family in 1938 and had two daughters. She grew up at Ballyrankin in County Wexford and was educated at a boarding school in Bray, County Wicklow.

Molly Keane (20 July 1904 – 22 April 1996) was an Irish novelist and playwright (born Mary Nesta Skrine in Ryston Cottage, Newbridge, County Kildare).

Good behaviour by molly keane