So Late in the Day (2023) was recently shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year; it didn’t win that award however Claire Keegan won Author of the Year 2023.
The Literary Withhold
I read So Late in the Day as if it were a kind of literary mystery.
It is so short, (it’s a small square book of 4 chapters, 47 pages, around 11,000 words), that with Keegan’s combination of economy and precision with words, I found I was reading vigilantly between the lines as I went, not being able to stop myself from trying to guess the significance of every utterance and carefully constructed phrase. I mean, right from that opening line…
On Friday, July 29th, Dublin got the weather that was forecast.
…it read to me like something imbued with meaning. Did something or someone get what they deserved, I wondered?
Recalling other stories of Keegan’s, like Foster and Small Things Like These, I would suggest this is a motif of her storytelling, the slow reveal, the building up of a sense of something untold, omitted. The reader can’t help but wonder, question, try and guess as each page reveals a little more, what might be coming, the denouement.
Keegan herself suggested in a recent interview that the book requires a second reading:
So Late in the Day deploys her typically hushed technique to devastating effect; plain sentences unfurl their full implication only on rereading, the narration a veiled disclosure of the protagonist’s poisonous habits of thought. – extract from Guardian article
Review
A young man, Cathal, is at his workplace on a Friday afternoon and seems very conscious of the time, in the first couple of pages it is mentioned twice, it passes slowly, perhaps excruciatingly. People act on guard around him, they know something we don’t.
It was almost ready (his coffee) when Cynthia, the brightly dressed woman from accounts, came in, laughing on her mobile. She paused when she saw him, and soon hung up.
His boss indicates he needn’t stay the rest of the day, and Cathal is aware of him closing his door softly, all of which makes the reader wonder why, what has happened to this young man that people seem to be treading carefully around him? As he leaves the office at the end of the day and waits for the lift, on hearing someone approach, he pushes open the door to the stairwell.
On the bus ride home, another clue:
He would ordinarily have taken out his mobile then, to check his messages, but found he wasn’t ready – then wondered if anyone ever was ready for what was difficult or painful.
The final clue before the end of the chapter is when a young woman gets on the bus and sits in a vacant seat opposite him. He breathes in her scent…
until it occurred to him that there must be thousands if not hundreds of thousands of women who smelled the same.
A Relationship Unravelled
He returns home, steps over wilted flowers on his doorstep and spends the evening alone, consuming a weight watchers microwave dinner and opens a bottle of champagne.
The four short chapters alternate between the past and the present. When the narrative steps back in time, we learn about his relationship with a half French, half English girl Sabine that he’d met in Toulouse. The dialogue between them reveals a disconnect that goes unnoticed by him and is ignored by her.
It is the discordant undertones within their conversation and his contemptuous observations that reveal the long, dark shadow of influence and inference.
After the reveal, when we learn what has happened to him, who he is, he recalls things about his own mother, his father, things from the past that shaped them, though he does not acknowledge that.
If a part of Cathal now wondered how he might have turned out if his father had been another type of man and had not laughed, Cathal did not let his mind dwell on it. He told himself it meant little, it was just a bad joke.
A Take on Language and Lore
It is a thought-provoking, provocative read, that subtly explores a seismic patriarchal crack in Irish society, one that infiltrates language, habits, behaviours and attitudes.
It is ironic, that the title in English is ‘So Late in the Day‘ compared to the French translated title which was translated or treated as ‘Misogynie‘. One title refers to the actions of the female character while the other refers to the behaviours of the male character. The story is told through the observations of Cathal, so the English language title belongs to his perception of reality, while the French title takes on a more overarching thematic approach.
In the article below, in The Guardian, it was revealed that the American author George Saunders was a fan of the story and recently chose it when invited to pick a favourite New Yorker story to discuss on the magazine’s podcast, but stopped short of reading it, due to one of the words used.
Keegan (who read the story herself, with riveting poise) tells me she respects his reluctance “even though he considered it to be the perfect word – as I do. It’s what Irish men often call women here. Writing the language people use is part of what a writer does to portray the lives we lead, the world we live in.”
Further Reading
The Guardian Interview: Claire Keegan: ‘I can’t explain my work. I just write stories’ by Anthony Cummins
Word by Word 