Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle (Jonathan Cape, £14.99)

John Self is The Critic’s lead fiction critic. He lives in Belfast

I WARNED YOU LAST MONTH that Covid-related fiction was on the way, and here it comes already. In some ways, writers may have had an easier lockdown than everyone else — Kazuo Ishiguro said it “validated the way I normally exist.” After all, as Martin Amis pointed out, writers are “most alive when alone” — the corollary of this being that “they make living hard to do for those around them.”

Here then are three of our most praised writers, with new offerings that not only were written during one or more lockdowns (their compact length attests to that), but also take in the pandemic in their subject matter. But are the results superstrong strains of fiction, or zombie mutations?

Sarah Hall) was disappointing, it seems clear where her focus lies.