Life Without Children

A brilliantly warm, witty and moving portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heart-rending short stories

Love and marriage, children and family, death and grief. Life touches everyone the same, but living under lockdown? It changes us alone.

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.

'Life Without Children is boldly exhilarating, with its revelations of quiet love and the sheer charm of the characters' voices' Sunday Times

'Quietly devastating...shivers with emotion' Financial Times

'In the stripping away of everyday anxieties, the virus reveals what matters most, those qualities that are always at the heart of Doyle's fiction- love and connection' Observer

'Moving...and beautiful' Daily Mail