Now, he actually was the man with no children. They weren’t in the house. They weren’t in his head when he woke. Their names on the screen when his phone rang were often a shock; nothing in the house or in the rhythm of his day was a reminder. They were gone. He wasn’t a father. What was he? A sixty-two-year-old bachelor. With a wife. And she was a sixty-year-old spinster, with an occasional husband. They’d become brother and sister, somehow.
Life Without Children is a book that I’m glad exists. According to an interview in The New Yorker with author Roddy Doyle on his inspiration for writing a collection of (mostly) pandemic-themed stories:
I’d been working on a novel — I’d just started it. It’s set in the present day, and I realized, as I tried to continue work on it, that I didn’t know what the present day was. It wasn’t the thing it had been two weeks before, or even two days before. I decided to set it aside, and I thought that short stories might be the way to capture the moments I was now witnessing.Masks and hand sanitiser, 2m personal distancing and 2km travel zones, essential workers and zoom meetings, they’re all in this collection. Told primarily from the POVs of grumpy old men, these are stories of adult children giving up their leases to move home (which, generally, delight their Dads), partners in their “third age” rediscovering each other, dogs with human names, craft beer with clever names, and so many cyclists in lycra (actually, the collection begins and ends with collisions between pedestrians and cyclists — with a truly tragic such accident referenced along the way — so perhaps this is Doyle’s own greatest of grumpy old man pet peeves). And again, I’m so glad that this exists: Each of Doyle’s stories contain nice little slice of life moments, enjoyable in their own right, but taken together, they represent a valuable artifact of our pandemic experience; I reckon this collection will become even more valuable as time passes and memories fade. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
I don’t want to dissect the ten stories in this collection, but will include a few interesting passages. From Box Sets (presumably set pre-pandemic, on Irish life more generally):
The cookbooks were a sign of the shift. Whenever they went to people’s houses — and they did it a lot, on Friday and Saturday evenings, the homes of people Emer knew from work or old friends she’d kept in touch with — they were given food that was supposedly eaten on the streets of cities that Sam associated with bombings or destitution. Beirut street food, Mumbai street food. Jerusalem was the latest — Ottolenghi. The recipe book was always on the kitchen counter, and they’d have to hear the tale of the hunt for the ingredients before they were allowed to eat. Not that he objected to the food. He cooked a bit himself. Dublin street food, and the odd Mexican or Far Eastern dish. But, anyway, that was the start of the country’s comeback, he’d thought. And Emer had agreed with him. The street food books — the money to buy them and the money to use them, the tiny bit of ostentation. The books alone on the counter, and the box sets piled beside the telly.
The Curfew (about an “ex-hurricane” hitting Ireland):
The west of the country was being chewed by the weather; there were power cuts, roads made impassable, tin roofs pulled off farm sheds. Outside — here, in Dublin — it was a windy day. That was all. He’d been sitting on the bed, waiting. He wanted to see a car in the air, a hundred-year-old oak toppling; he wanted to witness something — anything. And he didn’t. The leaves were the story. The fact that nothing was happening. The leaves going the wrong way, and the woman with the teddy bear. They were his stories. He lay back on the bed. He turned, into whiteness and nothing — no thoughts or things. He slept.
Life Without Children:
Social distancing is a phrase that everyone understands. It’s like gender fluidity and sustainable development. They’re using the words like they’ve been translated from Irish, in the air since before the English invaded.
Masks:
The lockdown’s a nonsense. It’s more crowded than it ever was before the pandemic. There are chip bags and empty snack boxes all across the grass and footpath. It’s outrageous. And the masks. Dozens — hundreds of them. They’re damp and lethal on the concrete, like the leaves.
The Charger:
He can’t see himself walking into a full room again. The heat, the sweat in the air, the steam, manoeuvring himself through bodies to get close enough to shout for a pint. Putting his hands on the counter. Picking up a wet glass. Pulling open a packet of crisps. Licking the salt off his fingers. It’s not going to happen.
The Five Lamps:
Talbot Street — this was Dublin’s CBD. It was empty, the shithole it had always been. Grafton Street had a bit going for it; you could persuade yourself you were in London or even Paris if you wore blinkers and blocked your ears. But this place — danger at every corner, seagulls in charge of the air, half the premises already shut down, just waiting for the pandemic to put them out of their misery — this was Dublin.
