Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle, 2020
The magic trick:
Adding a “ripped from the headlines” element to make old themes relevant
Well, here we are. Brace yourself. Just what no one needs: the dreaded new genre of COVID lit.
Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this story was mostly written five years ago, and the COVID angle was tacked on at the end of the process to give it a more 2020 vibe. Either way, its presence annoys.
Odd then that you will also see me one sentence later praising the COVID angle. I do not believe it’s executed well here. And honestly, it’s very rare that any kind of “whoa, this is so now!” topical addition to a story does anything but irk me. But all that said, as a concept, if done well, if done tastefully and inventively (see Saunders, George, “Love Letter”), it’s a neat way to contemporize an old theme.
And that’s quite a trick on Doyle’s part.
The selection:
He’s in England—he’s in Newcastle. He’s just off the phone to his wife, in Dublin. The pubs have been closed at home, and the cinemas and the theatres. The schools have been shut for a week. Social distancing is a phrase that everyone understands. It’s like gender fluidity and sustainable development. They’re using the words as if they’d been translated from Irish, in the air since before the English invaded.
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