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The Key
(An Eochair)
by
Máirtín Ó Cadhain
general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | The Key / An Eochair |
| Author: | Máirtín Ó Cadhain |
| Genre: | Story |
| Written: | 1967 (Eng. 2015) |
| Length: | 111 pages |
| Original in: | Irish |
| Availability: | The Key / An Eochair - US |
| The Key / An Eochair - UK | |
| The Key / An Eochair - Canada |
- Irish title: An Eochair
- Translated by Louis de Paor and Lochlainn Ó Tuairisg
- This is a bilingual edition
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Our Assessment:
B+ : sharp writing; darkly absurdist fun
See our review for fuller assessment.
| Source | Rating | Date | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Irish Times | . | 18/4/2015 | Eileen Battersby |
From the Reviews:
- "The Key possesses all the subversive linguistic energy of the finest absurdist comedy, and, true to that tradition, it is also very serious. It could be a political polemic. Instead it ridicules the petty mindlessness of bureaucracy and office politics everywhere. (...) The frenetic fluency of the satire is sustained throughout. It is a literary performance piece that would be exciting to stage." - Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
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The complete review's Review:
The Key / An Eochair -- a bilingual edition in Dalkey Archive Press' Irish Literature Series that has the original Irish text facing the English translation -- is a substantial short story.
Its protagonist is civil servant J. -- a paperkeeper, "the most responsible and difficult position in the Civil Service. Because the Civil Service is paper".
His boss, S., has just started his two-week vacation, leaving J. in charge, but things could not start out worse: J. finds himself locked in his office.
On site, S. is the man with the key, the one who locks up every evening, and then opens the doors again in the morning, but something has gone wrong in the passing on of responsibility when he set off on vacation and J. finds himself still in his office when it's locked.
J. had been entrusted with the key to lock everything up but his first problem is finding it -- and then disaster truly strikes when he does, and tries unlocking the door.
The situation flummoxes one and all.
As one old-time clerical officer notes as they consider the possible courses of action:
I've never heard of any precedent for such an eventuality, and if there was a precedent, I would have heard of it.The problem is that this is not just bureaucracy at work, but the ultimate bureaucracy, the Civil Service, where everything has to be done just so:
Whatever else happened, nothing out of the ordinary could happen in the Civil Service.This, alas, proves very much out of the ordinary, and despite the potential easy fixes -- it's just a locked door, after all, that's in the way -- it necessarily becomes a far more complicated situation, with ramifications far and wide. It is potentially catastrophic -- or so anyway they work themselves up into believing:
A scandal in the public service, a service the public thought of as efficient and considerate. The story had already travelled the length and breadth of the country. The English papers would have it tomorrow. The Opposition would exploit it.Ó Cadhain's sharply written absurdist tale is tragically amusing, a clever spin on bureaucracy (and some Irish idiosyncrasies) taken to extremes, with J. a very hapless hero who tries to be dutiful but is overwhelmed by the demands of what proves to be a very rigid system.
An enjoyable little entertainment.
- M.A.Orthofer, 22 March 2015
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The Key / An Eochair:
- Dalkey Archive Press publicity page
- See Index of Irish literature
- See Index of Bilingual editions under review
- Other books from Dalkey Archive Press under review
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Irish author Máirtín Ó Cadhain lived 1906 to 1970.
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© 2015 the complete review
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