A New Yorker Story by Claire Keegan That Needed More

 In the usual author interview, Claire Keegan said she wanted to make "So Late in the Day," her Feb. 21, 2022, New Yorker short story, "an exploration of misogyny," But it's more a description of ships passing in the night and a failure to explore what women want.

In a nutshell, the piece is about a man named Cathal who appears to work as a clerk at a Dublin institution that provides financial support to the arts -- near the famous statue of Oscar Wilde on one corner of Marrion Square. Unmarried, and apparently never married, he lives an unremarkable life in a coastal town called Arklow, a lengthy bus ride south of Dublin. 

A couple years earlier, he had met a well-dressed, rather petite woman named Sabine at a conference in Toulouse, only to discover she worked near his office in Dublin and unmarried, lived in a flat with three younger women. The daughter of a French father and an English mother who divorced early in her life, she had grown up in Normandy and spoke English in a fashion that sometimes grated on Cathal.

Nonetheless, after to getting to know her a bit and discovering she liked the countryside, he invited her down to Arklow. Soon she began showing up most weekends and since they appeared to be getting along quite well, Cathal eventually, and in an almost offhand fashion, suggested marriage.

Simone initially dismissed the notion with "a type of chocked laughter" and questions suggestive of incredulity, but three weeks later, "finally relented."

It's all downhill from there as they discover they don't actually know each other that well and that Cathal, used to living alone, would prefer to have her more as a possession than as a partner.  Keegan's depiction of that is well done, but what's totally missing from this story is any explanation of why Simone would have agreed to marry Cathal in the first place. She's attracted to the town in which he lives more than to the man himself -- clearly a beta-male to everyone who encounters him in the story.

The addition of some exploration of the age-old question "what do women want?" would have made this a far more interesting tale than the version printed in the magazine. As it stands, while it is easy to agree that Cathal got what he richly deserved, it's a mystery as to why the more sophisticated Simone was content with Cathal as little more than weekends in the country and an escape from those other women, paid for with some uncomplicated, consensual sex and very good dinners after which Cathal, the misogynist, would clean up.

This is "a world where women expect more," Keegan said in the New Yorker author interview. What Simone's actions say about her values in that respect is a bigger question than what Cathal's say about him -- based on Keegan's depiction of the man.