FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE

'A considerable achievement' GUARDIAN

'Highly recommended' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

'Excellent entertainment: an absorbing book' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Durraghglass is a beautiful mansion in Southern Ireland, now crumbling in neglect. The time is the present - a present that churns with the bizarre passions of its owners' past. The Swifts - three sisters of marked eccentricity, defiantly christened April, May and Baby June, and their only brother, one-eyed Jasper - have little in common, save vivid memories of darling Mummy, and a long lost youth peculiarly prone to acts of treachery.

Into their world comes Cousin Leda from Vienna, a visitor from the past, blind but beguiling - a thrilling guest. But within days, the lifestyle of the Swifts has been dramatically overturned - and desires, dormant for so long, flame fierce and bright as ever.

An hilarious novel about Anglo-Irish upper-class life.

About the Author
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. Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an award-winning writer, living in Canada with her family. Her novels are Room, The Sealed Letter, Landing, Life Mask, Slammerkin, Hood and Stir-fry; short-story collections Astray, Three and a Half Deaths (UK ebook), Touchy Subjects, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, and Kissing the Witch; and literary history including Inseparable, We Are Michael Field, and Passions Between Women as well as two anthologies that span the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Frog Music, her new novel, comes out in Spring 2014.

Reviews
A considerable achievement * Guardian *
A joy to read * Spectator *
Highly recommended * Sunday Telegraph *
Excellent entertainment: an absorbing book * Times Literary Supplement *
In jugular-poised wit and hilarity: a brilliant comic novel * Kirkus Reviews *
A considerable achievement * GUARDIAN *
A joy to read * SPECTATOR *
Highly recommended * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *
Excellent entertainment: an absorbing book * TLS *



Book Information
ISBN 9781844083275
Author Molly Keane
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Virago Press Ltd
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 188g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 132mm * 19mm