MOMMIE DEAREST

‘Molly Keane: A Life’ by Sally Phipps (Little, Brown, €24.69) The late, great chronicler of the Anglo Irish, Molly Keane asked her journalist daughter Sally to pen her biography, despite her reservations that Sally would shy away from a warts’n’all account. She need not have worried on that score. Sally recalls Molly’s long life and literary accomplishments against a backdrop of the fading glory of the Anglo Irish set, while capturing her mother’s flaws, her snobbery and her self-absorption.