Time After Time by Molly Keane

 


 This is the second (of many, I'm sure) Molly Keane novel I've read, and once again we're among decaying Irish aristocracy. The aristocrats on their uppers in Time After Time are decaying, or perhaps decayed, in more ways than one. The brother and three sisters who share the now dilapidated manor in which they grew up are old and have not escaped the ravages of life and of age: one is deaf, one has a mangled hand, one is missing an eye, and one is an undiagnosed dyslexic and perhaps mentally challenged in other ways. The world they were born into—a functioning, well looked-after big house—is gone. Leda, a Jewish cousin with whom they grew up and who was banished from the house for a relationship (consensual?) with the father, returns. She is blind and wants revenge for having been cast out. She aims to attain this by destroying the working truce—it can't be said that they like each other—the three sisters and their brother have established.

Keane's eye is cold, but her clarity produces out of this decay, out of Leda's nastiness, out of the absurdities of the siblings, a novel that is funny and true.

And the ending is happy. Maybe. 


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