Soldier Sailor: 'One of the finest novels published this year' The Sunday Times

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Well, Sailor. Here we are once more, you and me in one another’s arms. The Earth rotates beneath us and all is well, for now. . . 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. The impulse to shove my husband hard in the chest was so strong that I turned and staggered away to thwart it, grappling with the doors and bannisters that came rearing up at me as if I was on a conveyor belt because I wasn't in my right mind any more." 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.

Soldier Sailor is the most uncompromising, provocative novel I’ve read in quite some time. . . As honest as fiction gets.’ JOHN BOYNE

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?" 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."

In many ways not too much happens plot wise we simply hear Soldier’s thoughts about the early years of her son's life but this book never stops being engaging. In fact despite what could have been some heavy themes there’s a lightness and humour to parts of this. Although having said that it is also a very well done examination of motherhood within the context of patriarchy. More memorable, though, are the grim quips, such as when comparing little girls and their confidence to her son, or herself: "But don’t worry, Sailor: you’ll still be paid more than them." And no, this is not just an excuse for male-bashing. In fact, in a novel of very few characters a male Friend is introduced, a father of three young children and the main caregiver in his household carrying the responsibility load. More interestingly though, this 'Friend' provides Sailor with enough attention to get swept away in an emotional affair (a concept I never clearly understood until now). As a young woman, I distinctly remember passing women pushing prams, thinking that’s not going to happen to me. I thought I had better things to do, now I realise that is the best thing to do, why was I so patronising? I put it down to ideology, the way I was raised in school. Part of the book is to confront that. This is not undemanding, it is the most demanding work.”If Kilroy’s novel ended here, it would have done more than enough to locate her among the ranks of motherhood’s laureates alongside the likes of Helen Simpson, Rachel Cusk and Sarah Moss. But it doesn’t. The final section expands – abruptly, beautifully, agonisingly – to grapple with the true existential crisis at the heart of motherhood: the understanding, born with the baby, that we’re all time’s prisoners and “it will do us in in the end”. We crawl out, ultimately, from the chaos of early motherhood, but the love continues to obliterate us. “I wasn’t scared of dying until you were born,” Soldier says towards the novel’s close. Forget the sleepless nights; that’s the real horror, right there.

The Ineos football family, a brood with branches in France and Switzerland, has lately been a little concerned about the neighbours. It’s not so much they are too noisy, it’s just that as Nice and Lausanne-Sport peer through the net curtains, they worry that the folk next door might be putting on a better show. Manchester United know the feeling. Nice, the Cote d’Azur... The Ineos football family, a brood with branches in France and Switzerland, has lately been a... The Ineos football family, a brood with branches in France and Switzerland, has lately been a... Eat it, smoke it, stay up all night for it because the memories of the damage you wreak upon your body when you are young will sustain your spirit when you are old.” Some 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?"The novel is dedicated to her father Jim, who was a very hands-on dad, and to her friend and fellow writer Sarah Bannan, head of literature at the Arts Council, whose son Ruairi tragically died in February.