The Rising Tide, by Molly Keane (Virago, £6.99 in UK)

This is, in fact, one of the numerous novels which Molly Keane published as M.J. Farrell and not under her own name. Now sixty years old, it seems to belong in spirit more to the Twenties than the Thirties and, predictably, has a Big House and Hunting Set background. Though I doubt if it is quite a masterpiece, it is psychologically sharp, socially knowing, and closely knit, obviously the work of an insider in this rather sealed-off, self-sufficient, Anglo-Irish world. The cover blurb evokes - almost inevitably! - Jane Austen as a comparison, but to me the novel seems closer to Elizabeth Bowen without her extra, imaginative dimension, or perhaps even to Rosamund Lehmann. There is an introduction by Polly Devlin.