Can she really be so naive?

Poor Aroon St Charles. In the opening chapter of Molly Keane's Good Behaviour she insists, "I do know how to behave .... All my life so far I have done everything for the best reasons and the most unselfish motives." She reminisces on why so many people she knew have been unhappy, even her bed-ridden Mummie, to whom she's taking a dish of rabbit quenelles for luncheon. What follows is a memoir of Aroon's life at Temple Alice in Ireland, the grand house owned by Mummie when the family had money. She documents relationships between family and friends, as well as those that work for them, shining a light on expectations of behaviour and propriety within the fast collapsing Anglo-Irish society of the early 20th century.

Throughout the book Aroon constantly seeks reassurance and praise. In one bitter-sweet memory of swimming with her brother she says she "stayed up four strokes longer than Hubert and nobody said, 'Nothing to crow about, is there, Aroon? He's three years younger than you, after all.'" We're never told who would have said this, but we can guess. Papa "was the one who patted me and kissed me", whereas Mummie "didn't really like children," but sometimes "would touch Hubert".

Aroon also suffers from insecurity about her looks. Aged 57, she says "how nice that bosoms are all right to have now; in the twenties when I grew up I used to tie them down with a sort of binder. Bosoms didn't do then."

Boys at that time were raised to be boisterous and enjoy the outdoor life. When her brother introduces Aroon to his friend Richard, she relates some of his childhood experiences, which include a flogging by his father. This was not because he told "quite a big fib", which was considered to be natural, but rather for being caught reading a book of verse, since "it's this poetry that bothers me."

Of the other characters, Mrs Brock the governess was the most admirable, the one who seemed to show genuine affection for her charges and "accepted without comment my grotesque, unsentimental fixation on Mummie." Mr Kiely the solicitor was indeed solicitous, but perhaps had a hidden agenda, and one longs to know a bit more about Mister Hamish and Miss Enid, Aroon's cousin with the "hedgehog kiss".

You can't help feeling sorry for Aroon. She seems to be oblivious to the shenanigans that those around her get up to. Can she really be so naive, or is she wilfully ignorant and extending her good behaviour even to her own memories? In her world of emotional repression and Victorian values, "There was to be no sentimentality", even in the depths of despair, "It was the worst kind of bad manners to mourn and grovel in grief."