Life Without Children cover art

Life Without Children

Stories

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 Months Free

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 15 July 2026 at 11:59 BST.
More purchase options

Life Without Children

By: Roddy Doyle
Narrated by: Roddy Doyle
Get this deal

£5.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £9.58

Buy Now for £9.58

“[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.
Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Short Stories Heartfelt Witty
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet