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What a visceral read! Soldier Sailor by Irish author, Claire Kilroy is written as a mother’s letter to her son. Her account of the life-changing mad blur that is early motherhood. Although lead character, Soldier’s situation wasn’t 100% the same as mine, Soldier Sailor is by far the most accurate representation I’ve read on the churning feelings you go through when you become a mother and suddenly find that your life is dictated by a small human. Oh it was all so stupid. My husband would complain if his dinner was late. He would actually complain. And I would actually want to walk out. The carrots and potatoes were already peeled. I had chopped them and put them into saucepans of water while you napped. ‘When you get in the buggy, then you can play with your cars at home.’ In 2016, the Irish author Claire Kilroy revealed that she was writing a novel inspired by her fraught experience of childbirth and motherhood. Seven years on, Soldier Sailor is the novel in question, Kilroy’s fifth and her first for 11 years. Based on the clarity and subtlety of Soldier Sailor, she has been devoted in that period to refining this short book, in which not a word is wasted, to maximise its emotional and philosophical power.
Did they always have those names? “No, the child was Darling for years. Then India Knight published a novel called Darling, so he became Sailor.” A resonant and provocative novel about motherhood from the prize-winning author of The Devil I Know and Tenderwire. Soldier Sailor is about motherhood and the loss of self (or identity) when a woman has a baby and sheds her old life to become a parent. Kilroy exposes the intensity and bittersweet emotions this can generate.
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Author Claire Kilroy captures micro-moments of the struggle that are so real for the new mom but gain little by way of support or sympathy from any quarters but especially close quarters and that lead to resentment, seething resentment, threatening at times to crush the marriage. In fairness these do provide the novel's comedic moments (darkly comedic) and these are most successful in their descriptions of passive aggression: Kilroy blames the dearth of fiction about motherhood for her being so unprepared for the reality. “I marvel at my naivety now but I haven’t seen it portrayed. The renaissance in women’s writing happened after I had a child. It was a boys’ club. If those novels about motherhood were written, were they published, were they publicised?” What brought the book down from a 3 to a 2-star rating was the general negative picture the novel paints of men. I see this often in feminist novels, where attempt to uplift a woman, or critiques of one individual man cross the line into generalized man-hate. I’m very tired of that trope. Soldiers husband clearly isn’t the picture-perfect family-husband and deserved some criticism for that, but we didn’t need to generalize this into a guilt-trip directed at all men. From constant references to “the mans-world” out there, to quips about “only a man being able to design a car-seat with straps to free their hands from the baby”, to passive aggressive advise directed to her (infant!) boy about how to respect women when he’s grown. It crossed a line from righteous annoyance to wallowing in victimhood for me. Heimbold Chair". villanova.edu. Villanova University. Archived from the original on 27 November 2014 . Retrieved 13 November 2014.
Speaking directly to her child makes this feel like an intimate love letter, one that also brings to mind a constant inner monologue which certainly related strongly for me. I recall being at home with a baby and spending my days talking directly at them either out loud or in your head! This is a love letter to Sailor, an ode to her son if you will. It’s a commentary on motherhood, it’s struggles and it’s delights which brings with it a life long love even when you’re old and grey. The ending is simply wonderful and leaves me with tears running down my face. This is a fantastic book and a sheer privilege to read. The objective difference between the parenting experiences of mothers and fathers is laid bare, such as when the narrator considers men – like her husband – turning to films to feel connected to noble endeavours while women risk death for babies. "Tell me, men: when were you last split open from the inside?" Overwhelmed and exhausted and on the brink of collapse she is at times a risk to her child, to his safety, and yet somehow the idea coexists that she is his fiercest protector and will do anything for him. This idea is stretched to the point of suggesting the mother is the sacrificial lamb upon which the life of her baby depends. Meanwhile her husband continues with his normal life and regular routines and seems oblivious to the chaos that swamps them.
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With this in mind I started to upgrade my game. I am not there yet, but almost I think. But reading this novel on motherhood and mental load reminded me that there are still a lot of things that are putting too much weight on -especially- the mother.
As well as the emotional dissection, Kilroy is unrestrained when it comes to the physical toll of motherhood, asking at one point, "Why the burden fall on us, the females, with our ruptured bodies?" How many novels and how many works of non fiction have been written by women describing, reflecting, and making sense of childbirth? The change to the woman, now mother; the mental battle as joy, and unbridled love, fight with the enormity of the immediate life change. Exhaustion, unremitting responsibility, physical pain and body transformation; all experienced under the huge strain of sleep deprivation like you’ve never imagined. In Soldier Sailor she joins the litany of literary mothers who interrogate this, armed with a writer’s tools – language, intelligence and empathy – to illuminate the daunting task at hand, the all-consuming love, the sudden willingness to kill for their child. "I swear every woman in my position feels the same", her unnamed narrator says at the novel’s start. Throughout, there’s a strong focus on double standards and the ways in which the narrator feels crushed by the inequality she experiences as everything in her life changes while her husband’s life continues along as per normal. Kilroy’s phrasing strikes the balance between lyrical, in the mode of a no doubt great inspiration, Sylvia Plath, and realistic, the short, often grandiose aphorisms of thought: "Loss of self, loss of self – hard to bear."
I recommend this to every mother and every father, but I worry that it might have the unintentional effect of wiping out the human race should it be placed in the hands of those who haven't made up their minds about parenthood (or marriage) yet. Our love was a song, I thought. I couldn't quite remember how the song went but I couldn't quite forget it either. Phrases of melody kept drifting past. I strained to catch them but in straining, lost them."
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