Books

The work of Molly Keane exploded into my head

Celebrating Irish women writers: ‘Keane is a master of the glittering shallows, leading the unsuspecting reader into the squelchy horrors beneath’

Molly Keane, centre, at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre in 1961 for the production of her play, Dazzling Prospect, with co-author John Perry, Margaret Rutherford, Sir John Gielgud, actor and director Richard Leech. Photograph: Dermot Barry

Thu Mar 5 2015 - 17:00

The work of Molly Keane exploded into my head, shattering my safe and somewhat sedate notions of what was meant by the words “Irish”, “woman” and, indeed, “writer”. The world of her books wasn’t just another country. It was another planet: a Big House bunfight where men sported such names as Ulrick Uniacke, nobody batted an eye when three sisters were called April, May and June, and everybody was drunk by early afternoon. Also – not surprisingly, given the alcohol quotient – people vomited a lot. It was as silly as PG Wodehouse and as captivating as Jane Austen but much, much blacker and somehow – madly, impossibly – ours. Keane is a master of the glittering shallows, leading the unsuspecting reader into the squelchy horrors beneath. (Even now, I pick up Good Behaviour and wonder: Seriously? Four pages in, did Aroon St Charles really murder her mother with a rabbit mousse?) In 1981, Good Behaviour was pipped at the Booker post by Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Yes, she’s that good.

Other favourites: Jennifer Johnston and Mary Lavin

Arminta Wallace is an Irish Times journalist.

women writers