Claire Keegan is a master of short-form storytelling, each of her novellas saying so much in so few words. And yet, this short story collection was disappointing. First, the stories themselves failed to deliver the punch I’ve come to expect from Keegan’s work. Second, the book contains only three stories, for a total of 119 pages made possible by a large font and wide margins. On top of that, two of the stories were published in earlier books. The edition published in Britain and Europe is even shorter, as it includes only the new story. Both publishing strategies are misguided attempts to capitalize on a writer’s recent popularity. It’s a shame. ( )

It may be ungenerous to describe this short story collection—three brief stories total, two of them reprints, typeset with generous margins—as a cash grab capitalising on Claire Keegan's recent burst of popularity, but let us just say that I'm glad I borrowed this from the library rather than paying for it.

I've enjoyed Keegan's clean prose and deft portraits in the past, but here only the first of the three stories—a study of weaponised incompetence and oblivious self-centredness—came close to working for me. Even that lacked the hint of acid it needed, though. The others fell flat, showing how thin the line can be between "spare" and "simplistic". Should a collection that was apparently almost called Misogyny feel so muted? ( )

Claire Keegan latest offering features three tales. 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.

As always with this wonderful author, Keegan displays her mastery of the short story format. With spare prose she tells powerful, affecting stories, compact, tight, a masterclass on how to say more with less.
The only pity is there are only three of them.

https://quizlit.org/book-of-the-month-february-2024 ( )

I find the last story in this collection so misogynistic that it really colours my feelings of the book. Actually all of the women in the three novellas are pretty nasty. But the final study reads like Looking for Mr.Goodbar.-a married woman wants some sex outside her marriage and she is punished for it. What a regressive story-very very unsettling. ( )

Irish short story writer Claire Keegan here shares three succinct short stories to delight readers’ imaginations. Each of them bears her eloquent style with plot twists all the way until the last sentence. This collection has three stories about the tenuous relationship between women and men.

“So Late in the Day” describes a romance as it evolves from courtship into engagement. In so doing, it comments on how the social mores in Ireland about marriage are lacking and could use substantial improvement.

“The Long and Painful Death” describes how a German professor courts a female aspiring writer, only to have his advances emerge ironically in her work of fiction.

“Antarctica,” a previously published story, tells of a short romantic fling between two new acquaintances… only one party is a married woman and the other part has something up his sleeve.

If you’re looking for quick reads packed with content and skillful writing, Keegan’s stories are for you. These stories do not convey romance at its best, but it tells an all-too-common tale about the difficulties between the genders. ( )