Review: 'Life Without Children,' by Roddy Doyle

The daily tally of infections, hospitalizations, deaths — this is one way to measure the pandemic's toll. Here's another: Consider COVID's insidious knack for turning our latent worries into full-blown crises. Roddy Doyle's sharp new story collection takes the latter route.

The author of "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" and other insightful character studies, Doyle was writing a new novel in March 2020 when his city, Dublin, was placed under a strict lockdown. He soon felt that his manuscript, set in a pre-COVID world, was obsolete. Whatever he wrote next, it would need to acknowledge that the world had changed. Thus, "Life Without Children," a set of observant stories about Irish people coping with the pandemic.

Doyle's characters are fortunate — they're alive, after all. But the stay-at-home order has given them a surplus of time to examine their lives. Are they "essential" members of their households, workplaces and communities? It's the kind of scary question that surfaces when we're alone with our thoughts for too long.

Two stories stand out as the best developed and most rewarding.

Stuck inside for weeks, Mick, the sixty-something protagonist of "The Charger," feels "useless." One day, he finds the tip of his phone charger in a bowl of water. His imagination goes wild: Is his wife trying to electrocute him? His ruminations are hilarious — I'm "looking at an assassination attempt," he thinks — but the story takes a sober turn when he has flashbacks about an encounter with a predatory middle-school teacher. "Mick knows now: he was sexually abused," Doyle writes in his trademark punchy prose. The revelation unlocks something powerful in Mick, who realizes he can't tamp down his pain forever.

In "The Five Lamps," an unnamed man, shaken by the stark TV footage of a locked-down Dublin, drives to the city, hoping to find his estranged son. He knows it's a desperate, dangerous quest, but his interactions with strangers — a store clerk gives him a free energy drink; a child chides him: " 'You won't find him like tha', she said. 'Sittin' on your arse.' " —inspire him to keep going.

These stories aren't all winners. In "Worms," a married couple pass the lockdown by revisiting old rock songs. The implication is that Joe and Thelma are falling in love all over again. But the subtlety slowly erodes as the narrative heads for a sappy finish.

Generally, though, this book is wry and poignant. Doyle's characters take Covid precautions to hilarious lengths ("Masks"), save the suffering ("Nurse") and mourn at home while watching a relative's burial online ("The Funeral").

Readers who prefer books that help them temporarily forget about COVID won't find much to like here. But in "Life Without Children," the pandemic is just a supporting player. The stars are Doyle's palpably authentic characters.

Kevin Canfield is a writer in New York City.

Life Without Children

By: Roddy Doyle.

Publisher: Viking, 192 pages, $25.