Beautifully written . . . this sparking biography serves her memory and achievement fairly, fondly, and as one suspects, truthfully
Irish Sunday Times
A delight and a phenomenon; the literary biography of a novelist . . . by her writer daughter, who manifests herself quite as observant compassionate original and dauntless as her mother
Candia McWilliam
... Read moreHerald
Molly Keane, Sally Phipps's life of her mother, is as fresh and true and eccentric as any of Keane's novels, and shows just how good biography can be in the hands of a natural writer
Frances Wilson
Spectator
Sally Phipps, the novelist's daughter, and herself a born writer, has given us an astonishing glimpse into her mother's lost world in this beautiful biography . . . what Phipps has achieved in this book is uncanny and thrilling. No daughter has ever written about a mother with such pitiful honesty . . . If you are to read only one biography this year, make it Sally Phipps's Molly Keane: A Life. I assure you, this is memoir as work of art
Irish Examiner
An arrestingly graceful, truthful and compassionate portrait
Times Literary Supplement
Sally Phipps almost pulls off the impossible: she light-footedly brings Molly Keane back to life, and makes one grateful for the illusion of having met her
Kate Kellaway
Observer
Her daughter's incisive portrait of her 'enchanting and troubled personality' delivers real understanding
Country Life
In this exceptional Life of the Anglo-Irish novelist Molly Keane, written by her own daughter, there are few dates, fewer sources and no dull patches at all. Keane told Phipps to make it as much like a novel as possible , and worried that she wouldn't be nasty enough . But Phipps, in recounting her rackety mother's huntin' dancin' drinkin' life, the sparkle of her early novels and the darkness of her late, is better than nasty - she is forgiving and acute
Sunday Telegraph
Sally Phipps has written an intimate, affectionate life . . . a fascinating book that really needed to be written, and it fills a big gap. Not enough is known about the Anglo-Irish in the twentieth century. Let's hope it leads to a Molly Keane revival
Spectator
A vivid and sensitive portrait of Anglo-Irish society . . . finely attuned to the complexities of her mother's character, and captures the mix of courage, glamour and fantasy that sustained her class. This biography lays down new critical avenues for reappraising Molly Keane's considerable oeuvre
Irish Times
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