Molly Keane achieved fame and critical acclaim in 1981 aged 75, when she published the novel Good Behaviour, a razor-sharp social comedy about the Anglo-Irish in the 1930s. Her success was the more sensational because it was unexpected.

In Good Behaviour, she had the bold idea of inventing a character, upper-class Aroon, who did not know herself at all: readers had the satisfaction of knowing her best. The novel was dark, singular and had her hallmark charm. She followed it with Time After Time (1983) and Loving and Giving (1988), written when she was in her 80s. Fans disagree about the trio’s relative merits, but she is rightly acclaimed in this book as the best of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy writers – and the last.

With Good Behaviour she achieved something quite extraordinary. She makes Aroon, her narrator, tell a long and complicated story without ever understanding what that story is about. This is mindblowingly clever – and the best thing about it is that it is never clever for the sake of cleverness. There are moments when the reader pauses to congratulate him or herself for being astute enough to twig what is really going on – but never any when he or she is exclaiming “Clever Molly”. But clever Molly has used her “distancing” technique to turn us into something nearer watchers than story-readers. It is as though we are seeing events unfold which we can then interpret for ourselves, and the effect of this is much more poignant than explication would be.