Soldier Sailor - by Claire Kilroy

About the Book

"Originally published in Great Britain in 2023 by Faber & Faber Ltd"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

FINALIST for the WOMEN'S PRIZE for FICTION * One of Vogue's Best Books of the Year

Award-winning author Claire Kilroy's "lyrical and incisive" (The New York Times Book Review) novel that reads with the pace of a thriller and is filled with astute and witty observations of life with a young child.

Soldier Sailor takes readers deep inside the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love with a seismic shift in identity, Claire Kilroy conjures the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of equality, autonomy, and creativity.

Soldier Sailor is a tale of boundless love and relentless battle, a bedtime story to a son, Sailor, recounting their early years together. Spending her days in baby groups, playgrounds, and supermarkets, Soldier doesn't know who she is anymore. She hardly sees her husband, who has taken to working late most nights. A chance encounter with a former colleague feels like a lifeline to the person she used to be but can hardly remember.

Tender and harrowing, Kilroy's modern masterpiece "hums with poetry, insight, and humor...full of truths so sharp and beautiful readers will need to take a breath" (Booklist, starred review).

Review Quotes

"Oh this novel! Powerful beyond description. I read it in a day, holding my breath, heart bursting. This is essential reading for anyone who has ever felt swallowed alive by caring for a child, and essential reading for everyone who hasn't." --Barbara Kingsolver, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of DEMON COPPERHEAD

"At turns lyrical and incisive, this novel depicts the chaos, distress and humor of motherhood." --The New York Times Book Review

"A spare, searing account... there is something akin to electricity in her connection with her child... a chance encounter allows her to see and appreciate the beautiful contours of her life.." --Vogue's "Best Books of 2024 So Far"

"The narrator's wit, brutal honesty, and unsentimental love for her child set this book apart... a sharp, funny, often painful yet hopeful take on adjusting to motherhood." --Kirkus, Starred Review

"Gut-wrenching... the immersive prose veers from lyrical to brutal...lays bare the confounding and heartbreaking reality of mothering. This is worth seeking out." --Publishers Weekly

"Kilroy's writing hums with poetry, insight, and humor... full of truths so sharp and beautiful readers will need to take a breath." --Booklist, starred review

"The most vivid account I've ever read of how difficult it is to cope with the demands of an infant. Through a prism of love and despair, Kilroy's narrator illuminates how a baby can tear away at a woman's sense of self, as her needs disintegrate in the face of her child's interminable demands.., if a woman chooses to devote herself to ensuring her child's wellbeing, then someone needs to take care of her too." --John Boyne, The Guardian

"Searing, spellbinding... With the urgency of a thriller and the intimacy of a memoir, the book explores the fever dream that is new motherhood." --People

"Kilroy's willingness to depict how immolating motherhood can be balances beautifully with her tender evocation of the mother-child relationship." --Bustle

"Kilroy puts motherhood at the heart of her acclaimed debut... captures the complex and daunting life of a new mother and how destabilizing and challenging it can be to maintain a sense of self." --Parade

"Soldier Sailor is the best account of early motherhood I've ever read. Claire Kilroy is a rare genius." --Sarah Manguso, author of Very Cold People

"A bring-you-to-your-knees depiction of motherhood that is at once a descent into despair and an ode to the deepest love imaginable. I want to frame the final pages, revisit them every day as a reminder of why we risk ourselves in the name of devotion. Fearless, exacting, and absolutely hot to the touch, Kilroy's novel is wise, urgent, and completely unforgettable." --Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot

"Raw, funny and angry, it is a novel that provokes a huge range of emotions in the reader: sorrow for the agony that the new mum endures, laughter and tenderness, and awe at the elemental and universal aspects of parenthood." --Monica Ali in The Guardian's "Why we chose the Women's prize for fiction shortlist"

"Virtuosic . . . a resonant and important book, vital in all senses of the word, a flare sent up from the shores of early motherhood, a lesson in surviving the wilderness." --Irish Times

"Not a word is wasted in this profound short novel . . . Soldier Sailor is a novel which is about time and language as much as parenthood . . . A stylistic whirlwind that left me breathless." --The Independent

"Claire Kilroy made me cry. The ending to her novel is beautiful, tender, noble even. A happy ending that makes you cry--surely that's the best of both worlds. Kilroy makes a well-trodden subject feel original by combining literary skill with warmth, humor and wicked observations of everyday life. On nearly every page there was a sentence or an observation that I wanted to underline because it was funny, lovely or real." --The Times (UK)

"A whole-body experience . . . it comes at you full-throttle, as if delivered on a single breath. . . . [Read] alongside the likes of Helen Simpson, Rachel Cusk and Sarah Moss." --The Guardian

"Brilliant, brutally honest, very funny . . . A novel that immediately feels like the definitive work on modern motherhood, one that breaks every taboo." --The Sunday Times (UK)

"A novel about motherhood that captures the chaos, exhaustion, and almost unbearable moments of joy so perfectly. It's very moving and also very funny." --Paul Murray

"I'm not aware of another book like this... So touching, with a sense of tenderness and element of the mythological... a book that many women will enjoy and I think most men would not only benefit from but need badly." --Colm Toibin

"A scorching read, I could not put it down." --Anne Enright

"Intense, furious, moving and often extremely funny." --David Nicholls

"Claire Kilroy manages to articulate something about motherhood and selfhood that I didn't think could be articulated. Parents especially--read this novel." --Mary Beth Keane

"Every woman on earth will identify with this book. Every man will learn something urgent to his betterment. It sings with great authority about the wretched entrapment and molecular joy of motherhood." --Sebastian Barry

"My favorite novel this year, Soldier, Sailor manages, extraordinarily, to capture the frayed nerves and frittered mind of a woman with a young child, trying to recalibrate after childbirth. Addressed to her infant son as he begins his maiden voyage, a woman stares at the narrowing margins of her world, trying to get a foothold. She undergoes a near-hallucinatory deprivation of self, a kind of dazzling blackout. This is the diamond-sharp story that lies beneath the peaceful, swaying bassinet; the story of the cataclysmic, earth-shaking shift of one life gone off the rails just as another is set on its tracks." --Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, author of Alice Sadie Celine

"A searing portrait of the early years of parenting... Kilroy succeeds in offering readers a glimpse into motherhood that feels as primal as it is poetic, a brilliant reflection of how impossibly enormous all emotions become in the transition into motherhood. Raw and honest, Soldier Sailor will leave readers white-knuckled at the end of an emotional roller-coaster of anguish and joy alike that perfectly encapsulates the extremes of becoming a parent." --Shelf Awareness

About the Author

Claire Kilroy is the author of five novels including Soldier Sailor, All Summer, Tenderwire, and The Devil I Know. She was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2004 and has been shortlisted for many other prizes, including the Irish Novel of the Year, Women's Prize, and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. She studied at Trinity College and lives in Dublin.