In April, members of the Service95 Book Club entered the world of Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth. It was the first time the club tackled a play, but it kept in theme with the subjects and topics that the book club usually explores—a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of reality, and a lot of engaging scenes that will stay with readers long after they turn the final page. For May, the book club continues to transcend the ordinary with So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan.
Readers around the world are familiar with the fictional works of Claire Keegan. She is a critically acclaimed writer of international bestsellers, with books that have been translated into more than 35 languages. There are also the numerous awards and prizes she has received over the years, such as the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Edge Hill Prize, the Davy Byrnes Award, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, and a New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century for 2021’s Small Things Like These. Additionally, she was awarded Woman of the Year for Literature in Ireland in 2022, Author of the Year 2023, the Seamus Heaney Award for Arts & Letters 2024, and the Siegfried Lenz Prize 2024. Overall, Keegan is an expert at bringing readers into new worlds, so with So Late in the Day, book club members will be introduced to a variety of stories that demonstrate her literary prowess.
Dua Lipa shares,
“My monthly read for May is ‘So Late in the Day’ by Irish writer Claire Keegan. Her stories are small gems: deceptively short but they carry the heft of a great novel. This will take you less than an hour to read, but you’ll want to start again the moment you finish.
“‘So Late in the Day’ opens with an unremarkable man, Cathal, on a seemingly uneventful day in Dublin: Friday, 29 July. But something is off. He’s distracted at work, his colleagues are being nice to him, he’s trying to avoid them.
“We soon realize that this is not the day Cathal had planned. Small clues are dropped, the date being one of them: 29 July is the anniversary of the doomed marriage between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
“At the center of the book is Cathal’s relationship with Sabine, his French girlfriend. With her trademark precision, Claire slowly reveals the small cuts Cathal unthinkingly delivers to their future together. He lacks a generosity of spirit. He makes mental notes about women’s weight. He kills every potentially romantic moment.
“Cathal is no monster. You won’t find him lurking in the manosphere, and that’s exactly the point. His is a more mundane form of inherited misogyny that sucks the joy out of his relationship with Sabine and ultimately diminishes him, too.
“I read ‘So Late in the Day’ as a kind of parable about lazy misogyny. It’s a lesson in what you risk losing if you can’t bring yourself to change. Claire delivers this without melodrama or judgment and with endless grace. You’ll want to read this book at least twice to see how she does it.”
In the interview below, Dua Lipa and Keegan explore Irish culture and the influence it has on internalized misogyny and modern relationships. They also get into the pure expression that comes through in writing.
Additionally, book club members will find Keegan’s personal reading list of books that taught her about “good writing,” an essay from educator and author and filmmaker Jackson Katz, and a list of short stories to read after So Late in the Day.
On May 8, Dua Lipa will make an appearance at Southbank Centre in London, where she will open an event that will celebrate 10 years of the International Booker Prize. She was also recently announced as the curator for the Southbank Centre’s 2026 London Literature Festival held in October. There, Dua Lipa will curate a series of special events during the festival’s opening weekend, and during the festival’s entire run, she will hold events with the Service95 Book Club.
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