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 beautifully moving short stories mostly written over the last year Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times. A man abroad wanders the 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. 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.