This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Reisman Fiction Editor at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice we'll hear Bert Reisman Fiction Editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Roddy Doyle read his story, The Buggy,

from the June 24th, 2024 issue of the magazine.

Doyle is the author of 16 books of fiction including the Booker Prize winning novel Patty Clark

ha ha ha ha and the story collection Life Without Children. A new novel The Women Behind the Door

will be published in September.

Now here's Roddy Doyle.

The Bogey.

There were people at the far end of the beach.

Some adults, a lot of children,

an extended family maybe. He didn't know.

He tried to see if one of the adults was carrying a baby or if there was a toddler, a padded lump, plonked on the sand.

He didn't want to walk over down from the path across the sand and stones to the buggy. It was facing the sea.

If the people up the beach had been nearer to it, he'd have known that it was theirs.

He'd have known that they'd parked the buggy there at the edge of the sea, so the baby would drink in the air, the ozone, whatever it was, and sleep, and stay asleep for a while.

But it stood out alone.

There wasn't an adult or a sibling,

a towel or a bucket anywhere near it.

It made no sense. It was more than likely empty. That didn't make much sense either. A buggy

abandoned on the beach like that. But he remembered abandoning a buggy himself years ago.

...