Q&A with Stephen Doyle

“The Undertakers” by Stephen Doyle is a story that, for us, lingered long after our first read. With writing that feel so honest, so close to the heart of its narrator, it feels more like taking in a confessional than reading fiction. We are delighted to be sharing an insightful Q&A between Doyle and one of our fiction editors, Laura Jensen.

I adored this piece. It reads so much like nonfiction, mingling the sadness and excitement of watching your child become an adult and the discomfort in realizing that you have grown old in return. Very tender and honest. Can you share a little on the inspiration of this story? It carries such emotion and is so well observed, is this something that has been building in you for a while, or something that struck you quite suddenly? 

Firstly, thank you so much for reading and responding to the piece – I’ve really enjoyed reflecting a little deeper into the story because of your questions. The short story grew from a novel manuscript that had very little to do with the themes of the story. I usually write in short, disconnected bursts, whilst thinking about the world of the novel when I’m not writing. So it’s not unusual that I would reread sections later and wonder how they all relate to each other and have to trust that there are unconscious threads of thinking that I’ve yet to put down on paper that hold it all together. This particular stretch of writing seemed to belong to its own world and naturally cleaved itself off from the manuscript – or at least that’s how I thought of it! Perhaps like a lot of people, advancing through the different stages of life is something that at once terrifies me and makes me endlessly curious, and so I find fiction to be a way of thinking and feeling through that speculation of what the future will be like.

I think stories dealing with this subject matter often lean on the perspective of the child, with the aging parents more set aside. Was this always going to be written through the father, or did you play around with different perspectives? Why did you end up choosing him? 

What interests me a lot, and probably what draws me to psychoanalytic thinking more generally, is this notion of ambivalence. The child in the story is so clearly loved, but also represents a kind of threat or injury to the parents. I was keen to see where I could subtly lead the story to that might reveal an emotion or colour that was undeniably true for the parents but could be potentially unacknowledged in real life. In this case, I believe that aspect was the parents’ slight feeling of embarrassment, or shame, or rejection of their adored daughter, and this was much better explored through the father’s voice, I felt. I generally think these contradictory feelings – of love and hate, kindness and aggression, desire and aversion – can terrorise people who might think they should only inhabit one or the other, but the reality is that they can all exist at once.

“When she insisted that she take the boat across herself, that she’d be fine with all the bags as the coach would leave her in front of the university halls, I knew something was telling me your job ends here. We had been pushed off the shelf into retirement from a post we thought was a job for life.” These lines really stood out to me as an emotional core to the piece. Are there any lines you feel are core to this story / you feel particularly proud of writing? 

I think that’s right, that the narrator is being forced to come to terms with the inexorable passage of time that is starting to erode his social role as caregiver. Though it is a gradual shift throughout time, I think what interests me is the discrete nature of these changes – how they can often be marked by something symbolic – a graduation, the announcement of a pregnancy, a change in professional title, the news of a death. Underpinning the story are the parents’ own fears of ageing and death. The development of their adult child, whilst a source of joy and pride, has an ominous sense of threat that the father is processing. 

A title can tell so much about the writer’s perspective of their own story and how they wish to set the tone. What led you to “The Undertakers”? Was it difficult to choose, or did it come quite naturally?

I felt that ‘The Undertakers’ was a good fit for the main message of the story. By the end of the piece, you gain a slight sense that the daughter and her partner’s visit represents a subtle omen for the parents, signifying something about their own mortality. The fact that they are being displaced from their own bedrooms, moving closer to the ground, resonates with this burial idea, and I think this is consistent with the father’s feeling that he has been ‘pushed off the shelf’, made redundant from a caregiving role. For example, this is seen when the young couple insist on making Christmas dinner for the parents. It is this violent intrusion, a grim reaper figure, that ‘The Undertakers’ as a title captures for me.

I saw that you were a winner for the 2025 Irish Writing Centre Novel Fair – congratulations! How has writing a novel compared to writing short stories? 

Thank you very much. I am definitely drawn to novels as a format, as there’s a lot more space to develop a central idea. Short stories don’t come as naturally to me, and I am so envious when I read brilliant short story collections like Louise Kennedy’s or Wendy Erskine’s. My favourite thing about writing longer manuscripts over a longer period of time is being able to think about the world and the characters throughout the day and night when I’m not writing. It’s such a rich inner world to be able to create for yourself, and it often surprises me how the written material and the imaginary world iteratively interact with each other over time.

Are there any authors that inspire your writing? 

I enjoy reading a wide range of things. Novels, plays, poetry. I especially like reading translated novels as I enjoy getting an insight into other cultures through literature. I think I have gained a lot of inspiration from reading theory (psychoanalytic theory and critical theory more broadly), and I always get something out of hearing artists discuss their practice. The psychodynamic process of creative practice is something that fascinates me.