I usually try to steer clear of such generalisations, but Irish literature holds a special place in my heart. I fell in love with it, when I was living in Dublin, sourrounded by Irish culture, history, people, and where I became intimately acquainted with that unmistakable everyday magic of Irish English. The best Irish writing can conjure scenes, landscapes, and experiences like no other. There is a rhythm to it that allows you to smell the sea and hear the wind flicking through the pages, a lyricism that allows you to feel another’s emotions as if they were your own.
From that opening paragraph, I knew that Soldier Sailor, this special novel, does exactly that and deserves a place among the very best of contemporary Irish literature. I was enchanted by Claire Kilroy’s prose, which flows so naturally and lyrically, calling it prose almost feels deceptive.
Kilroy depicts a new mother’s inner life disarmingly truthfully and tenderly, yet simultaneously darkly and desperately, and without any trace of accusation, self-pity, or glorification. It is a mother’s internal monologue, addressed to her son, as they struggle together through his first year of life, soldier and sailor alone on a ship in unruly waters. We witness the intensity of her endless love and the depths of her sleep-deprived desperation, her marriage strains, she loses sight of herself, but she keeps going, always reeled back in by that little hand that holds onto her heart and will never let go.
Claire Kilroy shows us how much has remained unchanged in how we raise children and distribute care work: a father goes about his usual life, mildly inconvenienced by disrupted sleep, while a mother is expected to enjoy the bliss of the newborn bubble! We expect nothing but proclamations of joy from mothers, yet cannot resist telling her all about how her life is essentially going to end, as soon as the baby is born. Mothers, who had to leave a satisfying career, more or less suddenly, and certainly quite unprepared, are now chained to the house with a baby, exhausted and without their usual social interactions, finding themselves alone and lonely.
In Soldier Sailor, Claire Kilroy manages the fine balancing act of celebrating the joys of motherhood, the moments of happiness, without denying the disappointment and loneliness. A balance that, as I am assured, is a unique requirement, an art, of motherhood itself.
As a woman in my twenties, not a mother yet, not yet pregnant at the time of reading this, but hoping that might be on the cards soon, this book opened up a world of emotions and experiences to me and made them seem so familiar, as if they were passed down in my mother’s and grandmothers’ voices. I cannot wait to read it again in a year or two, I am so curious to see how I will relate to this novel then, with a whole new world of experience.
I’m convinced this novel is the ideal gift for a new mum – instead of the usual baby grow. The gift of feeling seen.
Hadn’t thought of death until I had you. A door opened when you entered my life and that door goes two ways. Here is your baby. One day you will lose him. He will lose you. You will all lose each other, and he never called her Mama again.
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024!
Published by Faber & Faber, 2023
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