> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://log.desipundit.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men ★★★★☆ - URL: https://log.desipundit.com/so-late-in-the-day-stories-of-women-and-men/ - Published: 2026-11-08T19:13:20.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-08T19:13:20.000Z - Author: PM - Tags: Books Three short stories, very few words, and not one of them wasted. Claire Keegan uses words like rice grains in a famine, and still cooks up a meal that hits the spot. *So Late in the Day* is a slim book of three stories about men and women in close quarters, and what each owes the other. The first story hits hardest. A man looks back on an engagement that fell apart and sees, too late, how it could have gone if he had done or said things differently. It’s a slow cringe. You want to reach into the page and smack him on the head. He comes close to self-awareness when he notes that once the romance fades, women “*looked in and could read you.*” Then he goes right back to being himself. By the end I had no sympathy for him. I only felt relief for the woman, who got out earlier than most do. The second story moves to a professional setting. It’s about how much respect a person gets depending on where they sit in the power structure. The man is happy to take what is offered but won’t give back even basic kindness. When his manner turns, it’s sudden, and it reads like a mask slipping rather than a change of heart. Most people keep that sentiment hidden. He just didn’t bother. The third story is the most intimate. A woman decides to let loose and experiment, and the whole time you wait for it to go wrong, because you know it usually does. No man in her position would face the physical danger she does. That dread is the engine of the story, and Keegan runs it at exactly the right speed. One line could serve as the book’s motto: if things have not ended badly, “they have not ended.” What ties the three together is how little these women ask for, and how rarely they get it. At one point a woman wants only a compliment, and Keegan adds that “*a barefaced lie would have sufficed*.” The best line on cold feet I’ve read in a while: “*Maybe it’s just too much reality*.”. Short, sharp, and uncomfortable in the right ways. --- ## Edition Read - **Edition Type:** Hardcover - **Number of Pages:** 128 pages - **Date First Published:** February 22, 2022 - **Publisher:** Grove Press - **ISBN10:** 0802160859 - **ASIN:** 0802160859 - **Language:** English ## Description > Librarian's Note: This is the entry for the short story collection. Please don't confuse it with the short story of the same name. > > A triptych of stories about love, lust, betrayal, misogyny, and the ever-intriguing interchanges between women and men. Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, 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 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. *Source:* [GoodReads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/title?ref=log.desipundit.com) --- ## Notable Highlights > so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end. *\[loc. 51\]* > ‘Do you think I’m made of money?’ he’d said – and immediately felt the long shadow of his father’s language crossing over his life, on what should have been a good day, if not one of his happiest. *\[loc. 157\]* > ‘I just didn’t think it would be like this, is all,’ he said. ‘I just thought about your being here and having dinner, waking up with you. Maybe it’s just too much reality.’ *\[loc. 219\]* > That was the problem with women falling out of love; the veil of romance fell away from their eyes, and they looked in and could read you. *\[loc. 241\]* > ‘It’s not “clitched”,’ he said. ‘It’s “hitched”.’ ‘You see?’ she said. ‘Is not this just more of it? You knew exactly what I meant – but you cannot even give me this much.’ He had looked at her then and again saw something ugly about himself reflected back at him, in her gaze. *\[loc. 255\]* > Then a line from something he’d read somewhere came to him, to do with endings: about how, if things have not ended badly, that they have not ended. *\[loc. 324\]* > All she had needed, tonight, was what every woman sometimes needs: a compliment – a barefaced lie would have sufficed. *\[loc. 541\]* > “Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this: American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. > > They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. > > But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. > > Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground., to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.” > “Dr. Mary Atwater's story was so inspiring. Growing up, Dr. Atwater had a dream to one day be a teacher. But as a black person in the American South during the 1950s, she didn't have many great educational opportunities. It didn't help that she was also a girl, and a girl who loved science, since many believed that science was a subject only for men. Well, like me, she didn't listen to what others said. And also like me, Dr. Atwater had a father, Mr. John C. Monroe, who believed in her dreams and saved money to send her and her siblings to college. She eventually got a PhD in science education with a concentration in chemistry. > > She was an associate director at New Mexico State University and then taught physical science and chemistry at Fayetteville State University. She later joined the University of Georgia, where she still works as a science education researcher. Along the way, she began writing science books, never knowing that, many years down the road, one of those books would end up in Wimbe, Malawi, and change my life forever. > > I'd informed Dr. Atwater that the copy of Using Energy I'd borrowed so many times had been stolen (probably by another student hoping to get the same magic), so that day in Washington, she presented me with my own copy, along with the teacher's edition and a special notebook to record my experiments.Your story confirms my belief in human beings and their abilities to make the world a better place by using science, she told me. I'm happy that I lived long enough to see that something I wrote could change someone's life. I'm glad I found you.And for sure, I'm also happy to have found Dr. Atwater.” > “Then a line from something he’d read somewhere came to him, to do with endings: about how, if things have not ended badly, that they have not ended.” *Highlights from Readwise, topped up with popular quotes from Goodreads.*