Book 42: "Good Behaviour" by Molly Keane
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011 21:18![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeThat winter when he grew up, I enjoyed myself for the first time. I acquired consequence. To be needed and liked by two such popular characters as Papa and Hubert lent me an interest rather better than second hand. Maybe I was a parasite-but what a happy parasite, happy in their admiration and their kindness, happy in being their new joke.
I first read this book in the 1980s, but apart from feeling sorry for the large and unattractive Aroon, the only thing I remembered was the incident with the rabbit dish. But I remembered enjoying both the book and the television series based on it, and was looking forward to a re-read, even though it is a sad book and does hit some of my buttons. IShe may not be the most likeable protagonist, but Aroon is stifled by her upbringing in a family of poverty-stricken Anglo-Irish gentry, and always seems unlikely to escape it through marriage, but she doesn't deserve to be treated as a figure of fun by her family, even if she often seems unaware of the mockery. I don't think that Aroon's description of events is deliberately misleading, but she often misreads what is actually happening, and there are some things, such as her father's relationships with Rose and the Crowhurst twins, that I think she won't allow herself to see.
I first read this book in the 1980s, but apart from feeling sorry for the large and unattractive Aroon, the only thing I remembered was the incident with the rabbit dish. But I remembered enjoying both the book and the television series based on it, and was looking forward to a re-read, even though it is a sad book and does hit some of my buttons. IShe may not be the most likeable protagonist, but Aroon is stifled by her upbringing in a family of poverty-stricken Anglo-Irish gentry, and always seems unlikely to escape it through marriage, but she doesn't deserve to be treated as a figure of fun by her family, even if she often seems unaware of the mockery. I don't think that Aroon's description of events is deliberately misleading, but she often misreads what is actually happening, and there are some things, such as her father's relationships with Rose and the Crowhurst twins, that I think she won't allow herself to see.
