A portrait of pandemic lives, told in ten short stories. 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 short stories mostly written over the last year, Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of the 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 patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother's funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret.

Life Without Children cuts to the heart of how we are all navigating loss, loneliness, and the shifting of history underneath our feet.