https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/06/24/the-buggy-fiction-roddy-doyle
An older man speculates on whether a buggy on the beach might still hold a baby. He is on the way to visit his brother and the deserted buggy causes him to stop. He wrestles with the man he was in the past who would have known what to do. He remembers his childhood, his young adulthood and his own children. This is very much a story about feeling impotent compared to the way he felt when he was young. A woman comes and it is clear there is no baby in the buggy. Instead of him saving a baby, she wants to save him. This is lovely writing and a fine story but it will not make you smile. Later he tells his brother he found a buggy with a baby in it. It makes a better story and it makes him a man who can rescue babies.
6 comments:
You wrote "Roddy McDowell" instead of Roddy Doyle. I've read a number of Doyle's books and at least one of his short story collections.
I read the Carson McCullers COMPLETE STORIES collection. At first I didn't care for the stories, but as I went along I found a few of them more interesting. The last, about the end of a marriage, was pretty much like a train wreck. In "Who Has Seen the Wind?" Ken, a writer, published a well received first novel at 25. But his second did not do well. Now, thirteen years after the first, he can't write at all, and sits in front of the typewriter while his wife, who married him when he was young and "going places," works to support them. Meanwhile, he drinks, a lot.
Also read THE MEASURE OF MALICE, a British Library collection of "scientific" mystery stories, edited by Martin Edwards. A couple of the stories are truly terrible by any objective "scientific" standard, but most are good in the usual manner of these collections - H. C. Bailey, R. Austin Freeman, Doyle, Sayers, Crispin, etc. make up the roster.
Third is another collection of early Philip K. Dick stories, I CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE And Other Classic Stories. The title story, which (of course) I 'd read before, was made into the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie TOTAL RECALL, and it is a very clever and fun thing indeed.
BULLFIGHTING and LIFE WITHOUT CHILDREN (the first book by anyone that I read that was set post-Covid) are the two collections of Doyle's that I've read.
Some stories are like that, Patti. They're written well, they draw the reader in, the whole thing. But they're not 'happy' stories or stories that leave you with a smile. This one sounds like a thoughtful, reflective sort of story.
I saw this story online but haven't read it yet. It sounds interesting. I haven't read anything by Roddy Doyle.
My eyes are doing fine after surgery but I have a hard time focusing on anything and get distracted easily. I hope by next week I can do a short story post.
Take it easy, Tracy. I got new floaters to deal with myself. But I am prone to them. Doyle is more well known for his novels.
Yes, Margot. It is not exactly sad, just reflective of thinking back over a life and realizing you are not the same person.
I've not read any of Doyle's work in quite a few years. I really enjoyed the BARRYTOWN TRILOGY and have 2-3 of his books at home in the always growing TBR pile.
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