Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, considered “among the form’s most masterful practitioners” (New York Times), Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories, newly revised and expanded, together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan’s earliest to her most recent work.

In “So Late in the Day,” Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he behaved differently; in “The Long and Painful Death,” a writer’s arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll for a residency is disrupted by an academic who imposes his presence and opinions; and in “Antarctica,” a married woman travels out of town to see what it’s like to sleep with another man and ends up in the grip of a possessive stranger.

Each story probes the dynamics that corrupt what could be between women and men: a lack of generosity, the weight of expectation, the looming threat of violence. Potent, charged, and breathtakingly insightful, these three essential tales will linger with readers long after the book is closed.

Praise for So Late in the Day:

Longlisted for the Story Prize
A Most Anticipated Book of Fall from TIME, The Guardian, and Marie Claire
An Amazon Best Book of November
A Barnes & Noble, San Francisco Chronicle, and Bloomberg Best Book of the Year
An Electric Literature and Oprah Daily Best Short-Story Collection of 2023
People Magazine Book of the Week

“Nothing short of a masterpiece.”—New York Times

“I did not think realism could be truly feminist until I saw Keegan wield its techniques . . . When realism is more revelatory of the world than reality itself, what can you do but feel grateful for Keegan’s mastery of it?”—The Atlantic

“The arrival of Keegan’s newest book, So Late in the Day, offers further confirmation of her spellbinding powers: the unpretentious language that feels forged in a hearth, the evocation of a pastoral but repressive Ireland, the characters whose predicaments remain lodged in your consciousness far longer than the epic battles of 1,000-page sagas.”—Los Angeles Times

“Across her oeuvre, Keegan illuminates violence better than almost anyone, avoiding easy didacticism. She pulls apart the strands of misogyny in individuals and institutions, diagnosing the same problem in both . . . Throughout her career, Keegan seems to emphasize that we take nothing with us and that all that matters is what we give each other.”—Washington Post

“In spare and exact strokes, Keegan transforms these domestic circumstances into universal mirrors. Easy to devour in a single sitting but likely to haunt you for years.”—Oprah Daily, Best Short-Story Collection of 2023

“A trio of brilliantly polished stories . . . In Keegan’s expert hands, even a minor skirmish—between a pushy older man and the writer who grudgingly lets him interrupt her solitude at an artist’s residency—illuminates how the sexes so often seem to navigate the world on completely different operating systems.”—People Magazine, Book of the Week

“The sharp observations and memories of Keegan’s characters reach back into the inheritance and perpetuation of misogyny as well as the objectification of women, but is done so masterfully, naturally, and imaginatively that you may not even realize that these ideas drive the stories until the second read. So Late in the Day is a powerful and necessary collection for not only this day and age, but any.”—Electric Literature, A Best Short Story Collection of the Year

“A master class in precisely crafted short fiction . . . Keegan’s trenchant observations explode like bombshells, bringing menace and retribution to tales of romance delayed, denied, and even deadly.”—Booklist, starred review

“Compact but deep explorations of human vulnerability from a master of the form.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Exquisite . . . These pristine stories demonstrate the author’s genius for economy. Keegan says in a paragraph what other writers take entire novels to reveal.”—Publishers Weekly

“Reading Irish-born Claire Keegan is like succumbing to a drug: eerie, hallucinogenic, time-stopping. Her simplest sentences envelop the brain (and all the senses) in a deep, fully dimensional dream . . . Each story is as substantive as a novel, and as breathtaking . . . Unforgettable.”—San Francisco Chronicle, “Favorite Fiction and Nonfiction Books of 2023” Selection 

“Impressive . . . Keegan’s thrifty prose again yields concise, substantive, and spellbinding storytelling.”—Boston Globe

“Tight, potent . . . [Keegan] has chosen her details carefully. Everything means something . . . Her details are so natural that readers might not immediately understand their significance. The stories grow richer with each read . . . [These stories] have new and powerful things to say about the ever-mystifying, ever-colliding worlds of contemporary Irish women and the men who stand in their way.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Keegan is the kind of writer whose spare, slippery work you want to reread . . . [her] sentences shape shift the second time ’round, twisting themselves into a more emotionally complicated story.”—NPR

“[Keegan] creates vivid characters who shed light not only on the complexity of gender issues but also on the hopes and despair of being human.”—Bloomberg, A Best Book of the Year

“Each story in So Late in the Day offers readers the suspense one might feel when walking home alone late at night. Violence lurks in Keegan’s stories, just as it does in our real world, despite it being so late in the story of women and men.”—Washington Independent Review of Books

“It’s impossible to overstate the talent of this Irish writer. Her stories are neither happy nor sad; she taps into some unnamed emotion that is more true, more pure . . . Gift this perfect little triptych to everyone on your holiday list.”—The Center for Fiction

“A masterclass in brevity and narrative precision . . . Keegan’s fiction is full of understated knowledge, restraint and subtext . . . Every sentence, every dialogue is layered and pregnant with meaning . . . So Late in the Day is proof that in the hands of a deft, masterful writer like Keegan, a short story, or a novella, can convey more and be more richly rewarding than many contemporary brick-size novels.”—Daily Star

“[Keegan’s] slim volumes of fiction . . . are like master classes in how to say more with less.”—Bookreporter

“[Keegan] is a superb stylist: every well-structured paragraph contains multitudes . . . Incredibly engrossing . . . She constructs her stories from a skeleton of inferences that rise, gloriously, to form complex urges, crimes, desires, rebellions and, crucially, universal truths. Each brief work is worth the wait: Keegan is something special.”—Sunday Times (UK)

“A mini-masterpiece . . . There is nothing demonstrative about this prose, which is not spare but restrained, strategically discharging touches of eloquence only when needed, and not through a profusion of descriptive detail, but through choice adjectives and verbs that just stray from the literal . . . Keegan stands almost without rival.”—Irish Times (UK)

“Claire Keegan is known for Tardis-like narratives that are bigger on the inside . . . So Late in the Day illuminates misogyny across Irish society.”—Guardian (UK)

“Claire Keegan is the queen of the miniaturists.”—The Times (UK)

“Stunning.”—Marie Claire (UK)

“[Keegan’s] observations make ordinary days effulge with magic.”—BookBrowse

“[Keegan] is an expert on the territory that spreads between hope and despair.”—Post and Courier

“Exquisite.”—Daily Mail (UK)

“There aren’t enough words in the universe to fully describe quite how affecting this little book is . . . As with all of Keegan’s work the pace is perfectly measured, like a relaxed heartbeat . . . Each sentence, each word is meticulously placed . . . As always, Keegan describes the domestic quotidian in beautiful detail, elevating it – women’s work – to an art form . . . This is a treasure of a book.”—Sunday Independent (UK)

“Astonishing . . . perfect.”—Prima (UK)

“The stories’ premises evoke classic Hollywood—the end of an affair, a chance encounter, a passionate weekend—but Keegan twists expectations in ways that not even Cary Grant could unravel.”—Chapter 16