New mother Soldier cares for her baby boy Sailor and struggles with exhaustion, postnatal depression, isolation and loss of identity. This is a beautifully written novel examining early motherhood with painful honesty and precision, at times I found it a very tough read but there is a lovely humour to it that kept it bearable. Content warnings for mental health, suicidal ideation.

Soldier Sailor is a book I couldn't tear myself away from. A monologue from a mother to her son, it vividly recounts the early years: the chaos, the anxiety, the exhaustion, and the self-judgement that comes with being a new mother.

It's a completely immersive read - visceral, unnerving, and often dark. It creeps its way along, into the crevices, unearthing the most complicated of feelings and emotions. The novel is brief in length, but utterly relentless in its exploration of a woman's life post-baby; exposing how her identity - the 'her' outside of her role as 'mother' - has been diminished. It's completely one-sided, in that we only hear from her, but that was what I loved about it. This is her experience, and while it can be difficult to grapple with, it's raw and honest and vulnerable - and relatable - too.

The writing is rich and beautiful - profound at times - and I loved where the novel went in its exploration of the love a mother feels for her child. It would have been nice to hear more about the joys of motherhood, but that would have made for an entirely different read, and I don't think it was the point.

I wasn't sure I would like this book when I first received it, and so haven't got around to reading it until now. I thought that it might be a bit too boring as the focus was on the thoughts and feelings of a new mother, and although I was a little bit interested I wasn't sure if I wanted an entire book of it.
Having now read the book, I'm really glad I did. It's a very real, funny, poignant and emotional story of the impact of motherhood on a woman and the way that it changes her perception of herself and her other relationships.
The writing is excellent, and I read the book in a matter of days. It's very absorbing and I felt completely within the author's world, and invested in what happened to her.
I've never had a baby or very young child to look after. But I could still completely empathise with the descriptions of how difficult and time-consuming even the most simple seeming things can become. The author describes the difficulty of getting to a playgroup because they just can't get out of the house in time, because even trying to get her child dressed is a battle, not to mention the various other problems that will emerge that she has to deal with.
There's a lot about the impact of just being exhausted, how this means you can't think straight, and you are dismissed as a 'stupid woman' when in fact this is the result of being a new parent. The author clearly feels that she has lost some of herself, in fact quite a lot of herself, as a result of having a baby. She is a different person and her world has become smaller. There's resentment towards her husband, who manages to keep his life going in much the same way as it did before the birth, and who enjoys a freedom that she does not have.
I enjoyed the fact that the book felt so honest. In a world where motherhood is so often portrayed as a purely positive thing, it's good to get the reality.
This is also a story about love, and the strong bond that the author feels with her child, regardless of the stress and real downsides of being a parent.
I loved the way that the author described her relationship with her husband. So many of their conversations are very direct and funny, as she challenges him over his behaviour. But I also loved that this is ultimately overcome. It's heartening to read that a relationship that can appear to be on the verge of breakdown can survive and become something lovely again.

I requested this a while back on @netgalley knowing nothing about it at all purely because it was an Irish author. Since then I have seen many reviews saying it is the most accurate portrayal of early motherhood ever written so I was very keen to dive on in. And can I just say, as someone who has weathered the early motherhood storm 5 times now, I totally agree with this assessment. I think like childbirth, we are programmed to move on and forget bits from this stage (and also due to barrelling into the next phase) - it's natures way of ensuring the continuation of the species - so we forget the broken sleep and the feeling of going from being an independent being to one who is forever linked to another. We tend to remember the wonderful times and the glorious smell of our newborns more than the screaming and the fear.

My god, reading this took me straight back there. Back into the trenches. I could feel the lethargy and stress eminating from the pages - along with the crazy, kill for you love. She has captured it all so well that at times I found myself holding my breath. The memory of falling asleep standing up, or anywhere for that matter. Or not having an unbroken nights sleep for about 8 years... the absolute bone tired exhaustion.

There is not a great deal to the story, it is simply the life of a new mum and how she navigates these early years with little to no assistance from her husband or family. It is all told in the first person as if she is speaking directly to her child. It's very full on and whilst not all negative, it definitely does not shy away from anything. And don't get me wrong - motherhood is an absolute gift and there is so much love and wonder in those early years, I would not change it for the world, but we also need to be honest about it, and I think this book is about as honest as you can get.

Some things that stood out to me, and would be my advice (not that anyone asked) for anyone undertaking the journey of parenthood is 1. It really does take a village. Find your village (especially if like me you don't have family help available). You will need friends.
And 2. Don't have a baby with a dickhead. ;)
Oh and 3. Sniff their heads a lot. "This too shall pass" and the next stage really will come sooner than you know it.

A beautiful, brutal, searingly honest depiction of the early days of motherhood. A remarkably accurate and visceral depiction of the pull between joy and despair, love and resentment, brilliantly observed, insightful and sometimes frightening. The prose captivated me and drew me right into the narrative. Masterful.

This was soooo good! I've never read a novel about motherhood that is as open and honest as this one. Intense and sometimes raw, but always truthful and wonderfully written. The total love for one's child (also the physical sense and the wanting to die for one's child), the struggle for time for oneself/autonomy, the loneliness & tiredness, and a husband that won't help. Kilroy tells you what it's like relentlessly.

Like many other goodreads reviewers I can't believe this book was overlooked by the Booker jury...

Thanks very much Faber & Faber and Netgalley for the ARC.

Voice is so important to me in deciding whether I like a book or not. I’m less fussy about structure, plot and even characterisation because the authorial voice can often carry those. It’s the author’s writing style I’m most keenly interested in. It needs to have personality, it needs to “grab” me, say something new and make me want to keep turning the pages.

Soldier Sailor, the new novel by Irish writer Claire Kilroy, is all about voice. And what a voice it is!

It’s urgent, powerful and almost dizzying in its ability to disorientate the reader. Sometimes it’s hard to determine if the narrator is sane or maybe just has a vivid imagination. Is she reliable? Or is she just venting?

The story, which is told in the second person, is framed around a mother addressing her four-year-old son, Sailor, hence the title. (The mother is the soldier, in the sense that she is “soldiering on”.)

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.

Her narrator is confused, furious, upset, loving and tender — often all at the same time — as she rails against the all-consuming nature of her new role.

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.

Because of the story’s structure, we never hear the husband’s point of view, but he comes across (via the protagonist’s biased and anger-fuelled perspective) as unsympathetic, selfish and pig-headed. And on the rare occasions when he does try to help, he does it “wrong”, is berated by his wife and so stops offering to help. It’s a vicious cycle.

Our harried mother finds solace in her friendship with an old school friend, a stay-at-home dad she meets in the park, for here is another parent, struggling with domestic life and lonely for adult company, with whom she can unburden herself and share her doubts and fears.

While Soldier Sailor traverses some dark and dangerous territory, there’s a rich vein of black humour to cut through the suspense that builds from the first page.

I ate up this book in two greedy gulps because I simply had to find out what would happen next.

Kilroy achieves this sense of urgency by tapping into our darkest fears and using the “rules” of the best psychological thrillers to get us invested in the people she writes about. I feared for both the mother and the child, worried some terrible fate was going to befall at least one of them, and by the time I got to the end I felt emotionally wrung out. It’s a brilliantly intense read.

Motherhood is the theme of this book and the feelings of a new mother written as a letter to her son Sailor by the mother named Soldier. Who has she become and how has becoming a mother altered her life and perceptions leading her to great depths and suicidal thoughts . There were highs and lows in the book with some parts more gripping than others

A woman with a newborn tells her son everything going on in her head and it’s a roller coaster of emotions and frustrations and intensity.. The first section is overwhelming particularly as her relationship with her husband is deteriorating. I guess the writing is beautiful but I found it all too much and it didn’t really work for me.

Rating: 2/5 stars

When everybody and their mom (yes, I just dared to make that awful pun) so unanimously seems to love a novel, I always feel a kind of guilt for feeling differently. Claire Kilroy’s latest novel has been received with almost universal acclaim, but unfortunately, it did absolutely nothing for me.
Soldier Sailor is a stream of consciousness-style monologue of a woman to her newborn son, in which she reflects on the struggles new motherhood, and the seeming impossibility of this task that seems to come so natural to every other woman around her. Kilroy captures that feeling that many new mothers have felt well, and I can understand the appeal in seeing oneself reflected on page like this. My problem with it, is that there are already so many books that do this exact same thing.

I am truly grateful that we’ve lifted the taboo on speaking on the downsides of having children in recent years. We’ve taken motherhood off its pedestal as “the highest, most honorable calling for a woman”, to its far more nuanced reality, and it’s high time we did! For that reason, I’m happy about last decades increasing trend of troubled-motherhood-fiction, and even motherhood-horror-fiction. In fact: I have a pretty good stack of them on my shelves. My problem with Soldier Sailor, is that it’s just another book on that stack, bringing nothing new to the table. Although the words Kilroy choses are beautiful, the message is familiar and even trite.
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.

Overall, I can’t recommend this book, but I’m clearly in the minority here, so don’t let it deter you. Many thanks to Faber&Faber for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

On a completely separate note, specifically to the publisher: my reviews are about the content of the book, but I have to mention it. This cover is the most hideous thing and does not do the book any favours. I really hope they will consider a cover change on a next release.

This is a gut-punch of a book. For most of it I felt physically breathless and drained. I can't remember when I last encountered such a sustained visceral account of a mental state, it's an absolute tour de force.

The narrator is a new mother - permanently exhausted, hyper-sensitive to her baby's constant fluctuating needs, isolated and drowning (a metaphor that very nearly gets a real manifestation at one point), with a husband who doesn't come close to beginning to understand the physical and emotional storm she is living through. The only thing that sustains her through the early weeks and months is the equally overwhelming hugeness of the love she feels for her son.

The narrative is almost stream of consciousness, and it will ring true with anyone who has struggled with extreme tiredness whilst on an emotional rollercoaster, but had no choice except to soldier on. This is a story of a period in life that is at once impossibly dark and as full of love as it is possible to be; happily with a return to ease and balance of a sort at the end. As an account of an overwhelmed mind, this is superb.

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.

Set in Ireland, Soldier is mother to Sailor. I assume her name is a reference to the trenches and front line of motherhood, as such but it could also be a note on gender roles. Soldier Sailor as a title feels very masculine for a book that centres on motherhood, it throws your expectation. Which perfectly reflects the themes and tone in the story.

The book opens on a high drama moment – Soldier leaving her son in the rocky wilds of a cliff walk to do what? Her mind isn’t her own, her thoughts are muddled. Motherhood is unique for everyone. By starting on a moment like this, you, the reader, might think you would never do something so awful to your baby, but motherhood pushes you. What is never in doubt is Soldier’s love for her son. What is in doubt is the actions she might take. This is what makes Soldier Sailor such an adrenaline inducing read.

Sailor is a handful in the same way that any baby or toddler is. Their existence and demands are endless. Soldier’s husband is busy at work, distinctly absent in caring for their child, so she feels isolated and alone in this new, intense way of life.

Claire Kilroy’s writing style is beautiful, very lyrical. It blends tenderness with pain so perfectly. Your heart aches while reading this. Particularly the ending, which feels like a poem and left me wanting to immediately re-read the entire book.

Claire Kilroy has ways of phrasing things that just made lightbulbs ping on for me, such accurate descriptions, like this:

'A new mother is not peaceful but in a jittery state of high alert. We declare her serene so we can leave her to it. So we can behold the glittering surface, remark on its beauty, and walk away.'

Since becoming a mother myself, I’ve read quite a few fiction books with motherhood as a central theme. It’s such a fascinating subject – especially when told from the POVs that scratch the surface and explore the tumulus time it really is.

I’ve collated some of my favourites on my book lists page if you want a few more recommendations. I’ll be adding Soldier Sailor to that list – it’s one of the best books I’ve read for capturing those wild motherhood feelings.

This is a small but mighty book that completely enthralled me. The quality of the writing is sublime and the candid honesty made me stop several times to think, oh, you too. Rarely has a book laid bare the brutality of motherhood. The fear, the shame, and the frustration and the feeling of bewilderment when a small child consumes all that a woman once was. The simmering resentments that can form between mother and father was portrayed so brilliantly. While at times this is a deeply sad read, there is a gear shift towards the second half that leaves a lot of hope and light as the last page is turned.

A truly stunning book that I devoured in one sitting.

There are books that make you forget yourself and who/what/where you are. This is one of them. It'll pop you right into the head of a new mother and her struggles. It made those struggles my own. Captivating, funny, far too real! Well paced, engrossing, uplifting ... I may need to rethink that last adjective, but it made me feel alive.

The tone of this new novel from Claire Kilroy reminded me very much of Bright Burning Things by Lisa Harding, Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan and Where I End by Sophie White. It is unflinching, brutal, raw, honest, intense, torrid. There are times when reading it that you'll want to look away (or put the book in the freezer as I've known @tiredmammybookclub to recommend), but the writing is so compelling you won't be able to put it down.

New motherhood is a seismic shift in a woman's life, of that there is no doubt. There is the you before children, and the you after children. Eventually, most women find their feet and find a space in their life that accommodates both their identity as a mother and as a individual independent of dependents, but there is a period in your life with young children where you're in survival mode. If only you could have your second child first, as my mother in law has been known to say wisely!

Soldier Sailor brought me back to those early days of new motherhood. Our narrator Soldier is a new mother to a baby boy she addresses as Sailor throughout the novel. Sailor is a demanding baby (they all tend to be to a greater or lesser extent!), and Soldier is really struggling with the physical and emotional demands on her as a mother, the change in her identity, the stripping away of her life before motherhood and a husband who is, quite frankly, a toad. She meets an old friend at the playground who helps her keep her head above choppy waters as she comes to terms with the loss of self.

Reviews suggest that this is about the agony and ecstasy of motherhood - I would suggest that it is more about the agony for Soldier. (Arguably, with a better partner, it need not be quite so agonising). I found it totally compelling, very relatable in places and beautifully written. I'd have loved a little more joy though.

I would say approach with caution if you're pregnant - or maybe not. Maybe someone needs to spell out how bloody hard it is when you have your first baby! There are a couple of scenes that are very uncomfortable to read and a lot of marital strife. A super read. 4/5 stars

*Many thanks to @faberbooks @gillhessltd for the e-arc and the copy of the book sent to me. Soldier Sailor was published on 4 May. As always, this is an honest review."

I was sent a copy of Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy to read and review by NetGalley. This is an incredibly intense book that to many will very much read as a true memoir. I defy any mother not to identify at least in part with it. This is a very emotional, well written book – I hesitate to call it a novel – and would be served well to new dads to understand how their wives or partners may be feeling in the first months and years of their babies lives. A must read!

Pure raw emotion, spellbinding and all encompassing.
As a mother of three, one of whom is a son, this outpouring of emotions literally took me straight back to those early days of my own life as a new mother 30 years ago. Such powerful conflicting feelings that we all have to battle with, all of us soldiers, all of us fiercely protective, all of desperately seeking to raise our children to be the best person they can be whatever path they choose to walk. This book literally has left me overwhelmed with emotions and it’s one that I’ll be recommending to all my fellow mother friends. Truly incredible.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange for a review.

It's a long time since my children were babies but this excellent book brought back many memories of the challenge to one's sense of self.

In a monologue to her baby son, the narrator spills out her heart, her overpowering love for him and her parallel thoughts of suicide. It's a hard read, but there are occasional touches of humour. The visit to IKEA will resonate with anyone who has ever visited the store en famille. Her chance meeting with an old friend at the playground brings warmth into her life for a time and boosts her strength to deal with the disintegrating relationship with her husband.

Beautifully written, luminous prose with jewel-like sentences that you want to reread. I shall now seek out Claire Kilroy's earlier work.

I don't think I have the skills to give this book the review it deserves but here are some of my thoughts...

This was an absolutely stunning book, I did not realise what I was getting into when I picked it up, heartbreaking and bursting with emotions Soldier Sailor is a love story like no other.

The writing is so powerful that you feel every emotion our MC experiences. There is a poetic flow to this original story of the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother who is struggling with the changes in her life. We see her begin to resent her husband because he still has his freedom "but that he was free to roam in my world, which we should now call his world, or perhaps the world, an adult place from which I've been banished."
We see her becoming a mama bear who would kill anybody, including herself to protect this tiny human, we see her feeling the over whelming love that consumes and confuses new mothers!

It was so refreshing to read such a real account of postpartum, not sugar coated, not leaving out parts that might upset people but the real fears the real struggles and the real emotions from over powering love to the strongest grief. I highlighted so many passages from this book, swipe for some of my faves. I've never been touched so deeply by a story, I cried so much at times I had to put it down because I couldn't see through my tears but it was cathartic ❤️

On a personal note, I related a lot to the struggles of postpartum depicted in this, of blaming your husband, of losing your friends of feeling so lost you go a little crazy, my daughter is almost 12 and I still feel a little crazy most days

There is definitely trigger warnings so check them if you like but bring tissues if you're going to read this which I highly recommend you do if you are a woman who has brought a child into the world 🙌

This is a frank and beautiful love story about motherhood. The only characters named in this novel are Soldier and her baby Sailor. The author captures the stress of being a new mother (being ‘a wounded soldier’) and the changing family dynamics with her husband. It is beautifully written and though often the reader will feel the tension of the narrator there are also moments of levity and humour.

I hadn’t read anything by Claire Kilroy previously and will now seek out her other novels.

Thanks to Faber and Netgalley for a review copy.