So Late in the Day- Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan
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Web ID: 17302226The Way I See You
Recently Claire Keegan has topped my revered author list. “Small Things Like These” is maybe the best thing I have read in years and I found her novella, “Foster,” later made into the poignant film, “The Quiet Girl,” to be a moving and powerful work. Her writings, concise and potent, reverberate long after being read. Her latest collection consists of two short stories and one novella, taken from different times in her career. The first one, “So Late in the Day,” brings us an Irishman man so sexist and self-centered that he unwittingly chases away his fiancé on the eve of their marriage. We do get some insight into him– but any chance for sympathy is obliterated by his stubbornly misogynistic predisposition. . In “The Long and Painful Death,” we find a woman who has been awarded a stay at a prestigious historic residence for writers. A German professor intrudes on her time only to “educate her” that many other more worthy applicants could be in her place, people who would take the opportunity seriously. After tossing him out, she turns his jealousy around and channels it into her writing. Finally, “Antarctica '' tells the story of a “happily married woman” who always wondered how it would be to sleep with another man. She feels time running out, this is something she needs to do while she is young enough. A bad match is made and she must contend with the consequences of tangling with an obsessive partner. This trio of stories center on individuals pushed into loneliness by the vacuum of failed relationships. The men here are artifacts of obsolete biases, while the women, particularly in the first two stories, are strong enough to reject the expectations placed on them and leave behind the antiquated notions of what is acceptable. Claire Keegan is a superb writer. Her works, while compressed and to the point, never leave things shorthanded. The three stories in this collection may be open-ended… but they are not incomplete. Highly recommended, as is everything I have read of hers. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Three masterful short stories
I always marvel over the ability of Claire Keegan to express so much in a short story or novel. This book contains three short stories that were previously published separately and deal with interactions between men and women. 1) SO LATE IN THE DAY: We meet Cathal on what should have been the happiest day of his life but instead he gets to spend the day in introspection, thinking about where things went wrong. 2) THE LONG AND PAINFUL DEATH: A female writer arrives at the Böll House writer's retreat on Achill Island, Ireland, for two weeks of gloriously peaceful writing, only to be pestered by a German scholar. 3) ANTARCTICA: A middle-aged married woman decides she wants a taste of sexual freedom before she gets too old. She tells her husband she is going to do some Christmas shopping in the city over the weekend and there she meets a man with darker plans than she could have wished for. A great taste of Claire Keegan's writing. This would make a great little gift for your literary-minded friends. Many thanks to the publisher and author for providing me with an arc through NetGalley.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
power dynamics between couples
Genre: Literary Short Stories Publisher: Grove Atlantic Pub. Date: Nov. 14, 2024 “Small Things Like These,” by Irish author Claire Keegan, was a finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize. The novel is centered on the Magdalene Laundries. I very much enjoyed the novella and admired Keegan’s ability to get deep into human thoughts and emotions with concise, pitch-perfect writing. “So Late in the Day” has three slim short stories. Once again, Keegan’s writing is compact, with deep explorations into human vulnerability. In this novel, she examines the power dynamics between men and women. And how those dynamics can shift and deteriorate with little warning. The title story, “So Late in the Day,” explores unconscious expressions of misogyny. It centers on a man feeling lonely one day and thinks about the woman with whom he could have spent his life had he behaved differently. He purchases his fiancée’s ideal wedding band. However, he declines her request to have it engraved because it would cost more money, and the ring would no longer be returnable. She tells him she did not want to marry him after all. This story is so insightful because without pounding the reader over the head, the author shows us that the man has no idea what he did wrong, although it is glaringly apparent. Still, Keegan lets us see how he could be seen as a sympathetic character as well as an unlikable, noncommittal man. “The Long and Painful Death” has humorous undertones and is my favorite. It is a story about a female writer staying in Heinrich Böll’s real-life seaside house on Achill Island, Ireland. The house is used as a writer’s retreat. Our protagonist is initially kind to a lonely male scholar who knocks on the door. However, soon, he becomes a daily intrusion, making writing impossible. Her sarcastic remarks made me laugh when he began to be judgmental. Throughout the short, I wanted to hop a plane to Ireland because Keegan describes the island's beauty so vividly. But the best part of the tale is how she takes the man’s unwanted attention and transforms it into art. I would love to share how she does this with you, but it would be a spoiler. I can tell you that the ending put a smile on my face. As the title suggests, “Antarctica” is the darkest short in the collection. A happily married but bored woman travels out of town. She tells her husband that she is going Christmas shopping. The actual reason for the trip is to see what it’s like to sleep with a man other than her husband. As the story progresses, we see her slowly let go of her married persona and doing as she pleases, not worrying about consequences. In a bar, she meets a man and has her fling. She soon learns that she is in the grip of a possessive stranger. Instead of gaining freedom, she horrifyingly loses it. The headstrong protagonist that many women could relate to becomes a character you will pity. Keegan transforms the tale into an intelligent psychological thriller rather than interpreting it as a morality tale. Keegan’s writing is undeniably beautiful. She reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates, who makes her characters feel fully alive and authentic. In this collection, whether they are love partners, acquaintances, or strangers, Keegan skillfully analyzes the subtle interactions between men and women. I recommend this short story collection even if you have never read Claire Keegan or any literary fiction.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Family
People. Relationships. Just when you thought you had it all figured out... Don't read this if you are already depressed and feeling friendless. It is, however, an excellent read~! Claire Keegan knows all about family. She brings us the bad, but also the very good. I received a complimentary ARC of this excellent set of short stories from Netgalley, the author Claire Keegan, and publisher Grove Atlantic-Grove Press. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read So Late in the Day of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Dark Stories
These three dark stories are exquisitely formed, with understated drama centering around unsavory people and their choices. The first story, So Late in the Day, is about a parsimonious man whose fiance’ dumps him just before their wedding. In the second story a writer has been granted a retreat in Heinrich Boll’s cottage where she is confronted by a man who accuses her of misusing and underappreciated the privilege. And in the third story, a woman uses her time away to conduct an affair but finds herself in deep trouble. These character’s choices and personality flaws reap inevitable consequences, and I was not sad for them as much as satisfied by the justice of their fate. Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Who are these characters? Read better by Keegan🤔
Didn't feel the connection I expected🙁 This set of short stories left me flat and a bit baffled. After reading the author's Foster that inspired a lot of sympathy and emotion I expected similar, but I felt no connection with these characters. I found the stories too short. The first story had only one, cruel moment of misogyny that struck me as memorable as the main character thinks back over how he lost his fiancee and considers how he was raised in a home where his mother was a servant and scapegoat to her husband and sons. The second story was also a miss for me. A female author retreating for a few weeks to a seaside cottage and finding inspiration from an unwelcome and unexpected source. The story provided minute details of how her day was spent but I did not get any feel for who this character was or what made her tick. The last story, Antarctica, was better than the other two but even that just frustrated me as I felt the stranger the housewife meets in the bar was a shadow: no name, no background, no explanation of his intentions. Thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for sharing a complimentary advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest opinion.
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Three small but excellent doses of Claire Keegan
So Late In The Day is a collection of three short stories by award-winning Irish author, Claire Keegan. In the title story: As he finishes work and makes his way back home from Dublin on the Arklow bus, Cathal reflects on his relationship with his French-born fiancée, Sabine. It wasn’t quite what he’d expected, and today was a radical departure from the day they had planned. From Sabine’s perspective, this might have been titled “Just in Time”. Keegan’s powerful little tale demonstrates how easily toxic masculinity can be inherited. Short but compelling. In The Long and Painful Death, a writer’s first day at a two-week writing retreat on Achill Island is marred by a call from an insistent German wanting to be shown the cottage, Boll House. She delays his visit but the intrusion puts her off her planned writing day. When she meets him, she realises that this angry, dissatisfied man, a retired professor of literature, is apparently incensed at the lack of appreciation and respect shown by applicants granted use of Nobel Literature Prize winner, Heinrich Boll’s working residence for writers. A tension-filled little tale with a perfect ending. In Antarctica: “Every time the happily married woman went away, she wondered how it would feel to sleep with another man. That weekend she was determined to find out.” After she completes her Christmas shopping in the city, she picks up a man in a bar. She’s had quite a bit to drink and he seems kind. She’s not disappointed; she gets what she came for. And more. This one has a sting in the tail. As always, Keegan spare, succinct prose easily conveys the mood, threat and tension of her stories. Her descriptive prose is wonderful: “He had looked at her then and again saw something ugly about himself reflected back at him, in her gaze” and “Just outside the panes, a hedge of fuchsia was trembling brilliantly in the very early morning” and “The sky was cloudy but promising, streaked with patches of blue. Down at the ocean, a ribbon of water rose into a glassy wave and fell to pieces on the strand” are examples. Three small but excellent doses of Claire Keegan. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Grove Atlantic.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A Lovely Collection of Stories
These three stories by Claire Keegan include three of her previously published short stories, but are now included in this collection of stories which aren’t technically connected, but are linked by themes of ’love, lust, betrayal, misogyny, and the ever-intriguing interchanges between women and men.’ I was so glad that this came out as a collection since I love the way that she writes, but had yet to read these any of these three stories. Beginning with ’So Late in the Day’, followed by ’The Long and Painful Death’ this collection ends with ’Antarctica’ ’So Late in the Day’ shares the story of Cathal, a man who is looking back over the years, remembering a woman that, perhaps, he might have had a life with if he had been another, better, man. The second story ’The Long and Painful Death’ revolves around a woman, a writer who is currently at a writing residency, trying to work on her writing during these two weeks when a man who she doesn’t know appears at her door, clearly upset that she has been offered this residency instead of himself. He is dismissive of her as a writer, and a woman. ’Antarctica’ is the third and final story, a story which reminded me of a song my mother used to play far too often 'Dreams Of The Everyday Housewife’ by Glen Campbell - at least as it begins. A woman who is content in her marriage, but wants a taste of something less tame, just a break from their routine, and so she goes to the city to spend the weekend. Many thanks for the ARC provided by Grove Atlantic, Grove Press
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com