<p><span class="a-text-bold">An exquisite new short story from the Sunday Times bestselling author of </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Small Things Like These </span><span class="a-text-bold">and </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Foster. </span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">** An </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Irish Times </span><span class="a-text-bold">Book of the Year ** </span><span><br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">'A genuine once-in-a-generation writer.' </span><span class="a-text-italic">The Times</span><span><br><br>After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabine with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently. All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude - and the true significance of this particular date is revealed. <br><br>From one of the finest writers working today, Keegan's new story asks if a lack of generosity might ruin what could be between men and women. <br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">'Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving.' </span><span>Hilary Mantel<br><br></span><span class="a-text-bold">'Claire Keegan makes her moments real - and then she makes them matter.' </span><span>Colm Tóibín</span></p>
<div class="a-row a-expander-container a-expander-extend-container"> <h3><span>Review</span></h3> <div class="a-section a-spacing-small a-padding-small"> <span>Simply put, Claire Keegan is one of the greatest fiction writers in the world. -- George Saunders<br><br>Claire Keegan makes her moments real - and then she makes them matter. -- Colm Tóibín<br><br>'An astonishing writer. There's nobody like her.' ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Irish Times</span><span><br><br>A single one of Keegan's grounded, powerful sentences can contain volumes of social history. Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving. -- Hilary Mantel<br><br>One of the great, affecting and powerful Irish voices. -- Sarah Jessica Parker<br><br>Keegan is the goddess of small things. Her ability to conjure whole worlds from a few words, an entire relationship from a handful of exchanges, is little short of miraculous. ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Herald</span><span><br><br>Claire Keegan is my favourite writer in the English language. -- Dennis Lehane<br><br>Keegan's fiction makes most novels look too fancy; her short stories make most prose seem too plain. Her inner and outer landscapes, the palpable and the imagined, are all of a piece. You think you are just looking - it turns out you are travelling. ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">London Review of Books</span><span><br><br>Brevity is unusually satisfying in Keegan's hands . . . Even in her earliest stories she is a superb stylist: every well-structured paragraph contains multitudes; at sentence level there is a febrile power to her word choices and rhythms . . . there is no overthinking or showing off. Instead, Keegan offers plausibility rooted in vivid details that generate a complex emotional authenticity. It is incredibly engrossing . . . Each brief work is worth the wait: Keegan is something special ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Sunday Times</span><span><br><br>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. ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Irish Times</span><span><br><br>Claire Keegan is known for Tardis-like narratives that are bigger on the inside . . . So Late in the Day illuminates misogyny across Irish society. ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Guardian</span><span><br><br>There aren't enough words in the universe to fully describe quite how affecting this little book is . . . As an object, it's a hardback tiny work of art in itself . . . 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. ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Sunday Independent</span><span><br><br>Astonishing . . . perfect. ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Prima</span><span><br><br>Quietly devastating . . . An understated cousin to Kristen Roupenian's dating horror, Cat Person. ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Observer</span><span><br><br>A quietly devastating character study of a man whose misogyny and meanness destroy what may be his best chance of happiness. ― </span><span class="a-text-italic">Irish Times</span> </div> <h3><span>Book Description</span></h3> <div class="a-section a-spacing-small a-padding-small"> <span class="a-text-bold">An exquisite new short story from the </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Sunday Times</span><span class="a-text-bold"> bestselling author of </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Small Things Like These </span><span class="a-text-bold">and </span><span class="a-text-bold a-text-italic">Foster.</span> </div> <div data-expanded="true" class="a-expander-content a-expander-extend-content a-expander-content-expanded" style="overflow: hidden;"> <h3><span>About the Author</span></h3> <div class="a-section a-spacing-small a-padding-small"> <span>Claire Keegan's stories are translated into more than thirty-five languages. </span><span class="a-text-italic">Antarctica </span><span>won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. </span><span class="a-text-italic">Walk the Blue Fields </span><span>won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles. </span><span class="a-text-italic">Foster </span><span>won the Davy Byrnes Award and in 2020 was chosen by </span><span class="a-text-italic">The Times </span><span>as one of the top fifty works of fiction to be published in the twenty-first century. </span><span class="a-text-italic">Small Things Like These</span><span>was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize, awarded for the best work of literature, regardless of form, to be published in the English language. It won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, the Ambassadors' Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.</span> </div> </div> <div class="a-row"> <a data-csa-c-func-deps="aui-da-a-expander-toggle" data-csa-c-type="widget" data-csa-interaction-events="click" aria-expanded="true" role="button" href="javascript:void(0)" data-action="a-expander-toggle" class="a-expander-header a-declarative a-expander-extend-header" data-a-expander-toggle="{"allowLinkDefault":true, "expand_prompt":"Read more", "collapse_prompt":""}" data-csa-c-id="p1qmsg-5wsuwe-i7dfdo-8l56dw"><i class="a-icon a-icon-extender-collapse"></i><span class="a-expander-prompt"></span></a> </div> </div>
