We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.

Virago Modern Classic Book Club – Good Behaviour

The first pick in the Virago Modern Classic book club was Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour.

 

Set in Molly’s native Ireland, the novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1981 (the year that Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie was awarded the honour). 

Good Behaviour has many fans – Hilary Mantel, Molly Keane and Maggie O’Farrell for starters – and is the perfect tale to introduce you to this unique writer. January 2017 was also the month we published Molly Keane: A Life, the new biography by the author’s daughter, Sally Phipps, so you can find out more about the remarkable woman herself.

‘I have read and re-read Molly Keane more, I think, than any other writer. Nobody else can touch her as a satirist, tragedian, and dissector of human behaviour. I love all her books, but Good Behaviour and Loving and Giving are the ones I return to most’ Maggie O’Farrell

Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour. There’s not a word out of place. It ripples with irony and it’s very funny.’ Hilary Mantel, on being asked which book she most wished she’d written.

To get involved in this month’s book club, buy Good Behaviour in paperback here, and as a Virago Modern Classic designer hardback here. Good Behaviour is also one of the titles in the Virago Modern Classics gift range.

Find out this month’s pick here.