The Minister said something on the lines of, “I don’t care if it causes people to lose their jobs.”

Ne any liv'd on ground that durst withstand / His dreadfull heast, much lesse him match in fight, / Or bide the horror of his wreakfull hand […].

Maybe the best part of Quirke’s opus is her conjuring of this curiously sterile subworld: the climate-controlled screening rooms where her veteran colleagues gather (“always in macs, always carrying little briefcases as blazons of busyness, gray and indeterminate as pigeons and vigilant over their rations of the free chocolate digestives”); the mind-numbing public-relations packet about the cast and crew’s inevitable high mutual regard; the mixture of horror and pleasure at having one’s reviews radically condensed for marketing materials (“those suspiciously decontextualized ‘Amazing’s”).

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.