good behavior

Good Behavior by Molly Keane (New York Review Books, 2021, originally published in by Andre Deutsch in 1981)

A dark, weird and disturbingly funny book with a gimmick that I felt reduces it to something smaller than its brilliant parts.  Aroon, the narrator, is an ungainly, very large, and rather obtuse girl growing up in an aristocratic but financially challenged Anglo-Irish family.  Her mother is a heartless and abusive bitch, her father is benign but ineffectual, and her brother uses Aroon to unwittingly disguise his homosexual relationships.

Aroon sees and feels none of this ill-treatment and considers herself happy, well-loved, and fulfilled.  Whether this is a result of repression and self-deception or merely stupidity is hard to know, but it begins to seem contrived and manipulative, and the book’s effect is correspondingly diminished.