Life Without Children

Stories

By: Roddy Doyle

Narrated by: Roddy Doyle

Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

“[Doyle] imparts a sense of poignancy and glimpses of happiness, of grief and loss and small moments of connection . . . you’re left feeling close to dazzled.” —Daphne Merkin, New York Times Book Review

A brilliantly warm and witty portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heartrending short stories, from the Booker Prize–winning 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 mother’s funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret.

Told with Doyle’s 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.

©2022 Roddy Doyle (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“[Doyle has] a facility for creating characters out of thin air and making them stick. Not to mention the sly humor, the ability to hew to the fine line between pathos and bathos and write unsentimentally about sad people and situations, and the gift for quicksilver dialogue that can sound like a poetic form of vernacular speech . . . When you put these together with Doyle’s broad range [...] you’re left feeling close to dazzled . . . he imparts a sense of poignancy and glimpses of happiness, of grief and loss and small moments of connection.” —Daphne Merkin, The New York Times Book Review

“Doyle’s brilliance probably shines brightest in life with children—which may give added poignancy to these lives from which children are missing, lost or launched. But Doyle’s other extravagant gift, a way with speech, does have its moments here, often in significant exchanges recalled but more generally in the conversational knack of the narration.” —The Washington Post

“Doyle’s accomplished collection probes the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on a series of marriages . . . A master of dialogue—whether strained, deceptive, or free-flowing—Doyle has a keen eye for the interconnectedness and the criticality of communication, which makes these stories shimmer. Doyle’s raw portrayal of living and loving under lockdown has a deep resonance.” —Publishers Weekly

Fantastic, Human, Sometimes Heartbreaking

Fantastic writing and reading. Emotionally heavy, which is inevitable with the subject matter. Great.

Relatable

So many passages made me laugh, reminding me of so many family members and friends from Ireland. There are sad parts yet the characters have a dry humor at those times. We learn so much about the characters’ current and prior life experiences. Thoroughly enjoyed the narration by Roddy Doyle, his voice and writing made me feel like I was not only in Ireland but in these homes and neighborhoods. It is amazing how much information Roddy Doyle conveys about each person in only the length of a short story. I will definitely listen to this again.