So Late in the Day
By Claire Keegan
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TW: Misogyny, kidnapping, infidelity
So Late in the Day is Keegan’s newest collection of short stories. It’s comprised of three, longer stories. Its subtitle is “Stories of Women and Men” and follows, as stated, a host of women and men through their ordinary (and in one case maybe a bit unordinary) lives.
The first two stories illustrate Keegan’s ability to draw you into a narrative and invoke emotions. While these are relatively straightforward, Keegan always infuses an underlying emotion into her stories.
In “So Late in the Day,” Cathal reminisces on his old relationship and what his future could have been. The story is told in flashbacks and forwards, with a slow, unwinding reveal of events that led to the breakdown of the relationship. This didn’t feel mindblowing or bring something completely new to the short story and gender relations, but it said the quiet parts aloud of this relationship between Cathal and Sabine. Choosing Cathal as the point of view was also an interesting choice.
In “The Long and Painful Death” a writer takes a residency at a place by the sea but meets a stranger. Here, the tensionincreases as the situation between writer and stranger progresses. Like the unending, relentless waves of the sea, the presence of the stranger lingers long past polite. This story was a slow meditation of art, motivation, and who gets to make art and if its important.
In “Antarctica,” an affair goes wrong. Again, the ordinary is underlined with a strange mix of tension and fear.
The first two stories held a kind of magic I’ve come to expect when reading a story by Keegan. I think both of these sort of wowed me in the quiet way. Keegan truly is a master at these subtle interactions that speak so much. They talk about how misogyny taints and ruins both the victim and perpetrator, how it gives people the feeling that they have more rights, and in that the everyday pains hurt so much.
You may have noticed I haven’t said much on the third story, “Antarctica” and I just didn’t love it. There was nothing wrong with it but, to me, but to me it felt a little more forced. Maybe purposefully, but still.
I think that these were great and, like Lahiri’s Interpretor of Maladies (I read this mid-2024), restored my faith in the short story. Overall, a beautiful and tragic set of stories. Keegan is definitely an author I’m watching for in the future.
Further reading:
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is an excellent collection of short stories! I also think that while more focusing on familal relationships, Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid highlights the everyday in a way that conveys much emotion and depth.
Quotes:
“After he’d thrown the dead wasp out and closed the window, he felt a bit cooler and used the downstairs toilet to take a long piss. There was some satisfaction in doing this without having to lift the lid, without having to put the lid back down or having to wash his hands or make a pretense of having washed his hands afterward—but the pleasure quickly vanished, and he then had to make himself climb the stairs.”
“You know what is at the heart of misogyny? When it comes down to it?’
‘So I’m a misogynist now?’
‘It’s simply about not giving,’ she said.”
“Down on the lawns, some people were out sunbathing and there were children, and beds plump with flowers; so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end.”