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Life Without Children
Life Without Children: Stories | Roddy Doyle
3 posts | 4 read | 3 to read
A brilliantly warm and witty portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heartrending short stories, from the Booker Prizewinning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone. In these ten beautifully moving short stories written mostly over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times. A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mothers funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret. Told with Doyles signature warmth, wit, and extraordinary eye for the richness that underpins the quiet of our lives, Life Without Children cuts to the heart of how we are all navigating loss, loneliness, and the shifting of history underneath our feet.
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ImperfectCJ
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I enjoyed this collection of pandemic stories, even though---like the days during lockdown---the stories tend to blend into one another. In these stories, Doyle explores with sensitivity issues of connection, estrangement, vulnerability, mental illness, substance abuse, and grief. I know a lot of people still don't like revisiting that time, but I find it intriguing and therapeutic to look back at those years that have influenced so much.

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BarbaraBB
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Roddy Doyle used to be a favorite author of mine, back in the days, when he wrote the Barrytown Trilogy and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.
He‘s written this short story collection in 2020 and connections to the pandemic are unavoidable.
The Charger, the longest one, is my favorite. It‘s a story about the lockdown and how it could be so cozy at times and frustrating, lonely and frightening at others. It all came back to me while reading this.

ImperfectCJ Stacking this one. I talk to a lot of people who just want to forget lockdown (and the whole pandemic), but I find myself craving art that addresses it. It feels...validating, maybe? Like, this happened, right? And it was crazy but also kind of good sometimes? Maybe it just feels less lonely when it's a shared experience. 3mo
BarbaraBB @ImperfectCJ I know what you mean. It feels so far away already while it had such a huge impact on us back then and I sometimes want to remember how it was and how it felt, good and bad things. (edited) 3mo
vlwelser If anyone can write an accurate book about conflicted lockdown feelings, Doyle seems like a great pick. 3mo
BarbaraBB @vlwelser It‘s a real Doyle book with characters that are very human! 3mo
Suet624 The title made me sad. 🤷🏻‍♀️🙁 3mo
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Anna40
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The 10 short stories are set during the Covid pandemic.The writing is a delight,I loved Worms it made me cry but the plots… I wish there was more to what happens in the stories and I feel it‘s generally something that seems to be no longer relevant for prize winning writing.I appreciate the character‘s inner turmoil&thoughts&insights but where is the story?And there‘s only so much older-dude-feeling-sorry-for-himself I can take as a reader.Soft pk