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.