A riotous, enthralling portrait of leisured life at the family home of Garonlea in the early years of the century
One glorious gothic mansion - Garonlea - and two rather different ladies who would be Queen . . .
Lady Charlotte French-McGrath has successfully ruled over her family with a rod of iron until the arrival of Cynthia: beautiful, young, talented, selfish - and engaged to her son Desmond.
When Cynthia enters the Jazz Age, on the surface her life passes in a whirl of hunting, drinking and romance. But the ghosts of Garonlea are only biding their time: they know the source of their power, a secret handed on from one generation to the next.
Molly Keane ... is robust about sinful human nature and the intrigues of the heart... - V.S. Pritchett
Psychologically sharp, socially knowing and closely knit - IRISH TIMES
The characterisation of women is first class - Sebastian Faulks
She is akin to Jane Austen in her feeling for the minutae of human behaviour - Polly Devlin
Molly Keane ... is robust about sinful human nature and the intrigues of the heart... - V.S. Pritchett
Psychologically sharp, socially knowing and closely knit - IRISH TIMES
The characterisation of women is first class - Sebastian Faulks
She is akin to Jane Austen in her feeling for the minutae of human behaviour - Polly Devlin
Molly Keane (1904-1996) was an Irish novelist and playwright. She grew up at Ballyrankin in County Wexford and was educated at a boarding school in Bray, County Wicklow. She married Bobby Keane, one of a Waterford squirearchical family in 1938 and had two daughters.
She used her married name for her later novels, several of which (Good Behaviour, Time After Time) have been adapted for television. Between 1928 and 1956, she wrote eleven novels, and some of her earlier plays, under the pseudonym M. J. Farrell. Her husband died suddenly in 1946, and following the failure of a play she published nothing for twenty years. In 1981, Good Behaviour came out under her own name. The novel was warmly received and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.