Battered Penguins VI

The Key Above the Door was first published in 1923 and is the work of an Irishman called Maurice Walsh who spent a lot of time in Scotland as an official of the Customs & Excise. His main claim to fame, Wikipedia tells me, is a short story called The Quiet Man, which John Ford made into a film with John Wayne.

This novel of Walsh's tells the story of a confirmed bachelor who lives an idyllic life in a simple cottage beside a loch. When the story opens, he and some friends are indulging in a spot of not entirely legitimate salmon fishing when they are apprehended by Edward Leng, who is the new tenant of the land they are on. The book proceeds to recount the story of the subsequent prolonged battle between Leng, who is very reminiscent of Gerald in Women in Love, and our hero, Tom King, who is at the start of the book a kind of innocent Adam in a highlands garden of Eden. A woman is involved, of course, and Tom - after some sauciness when, stranded after a boating accident, he has to spend the night with the woman in question clasped against his bare chest (to keep her warm, you understand, innocent, bracing stuff) - loses his heart.

The book is highly romantic and, I suppose, pretty silly – JM Barrie admired it greatly, which is no great recommendation, given his sentimental proclivities. However, it romps along with lots of fine descriptions of the highland landscape and some fisticuffs and nice descriptions of food. I actually bought it because I know exactly the area it is set in - indeed, I am ashamed to say, some of my relations by marriage own the land upon which Tom King’s cottage with its ‘key above the door’ stood until recently. Misguidedly, I think, the family in question decided that the little building was ruining their view and had it demolished.

While I cannot pretend the book is a work of astonishing genius, I enjoyed it and found it a good antidote to the rather miserable tales of despairing rudderless souls by Jennifer Egan and Lorrie Moore that I have been reading lately, (on the recommendation of literary minds far more informed than mine). This tale is told with gusto and is full of a love of existence and the world around us. It is, essentially, escapism, but as such it made a pleasant change.