Claire Kilroy: Soldier Sailor

Claire Kilroy: Soldier Sailor, Faber & Faber, 2023.

I’d been quietly resisting this one, because I feared that something bad might happen to either the child or the mother in the story, and my heart can’t really take things like that since I had children myself (which is why I found the books Love by Hanne Orstavik or Days of
Abandonment by Elena Ferrante so heartbreaking, or watched the film Full Time with Laure Calamy as a single mother heart-in-mouth). I find it far too easy to believe that we only just narrowly miss disaster when it comes to raising children: they are so fragile, especially when they are small, and so much can go wrong. And we as mothers are so fragile too, especially during those hazy, sleep-deprived, hormonally-challenged early years.

But yes, I finally got a chance to borrow it from the library, after a long waiting list (and even now it has three reserves on it, so I need to return it soon). Which is why I’m taking a short break from my #1937Club to review it.

A few years ago, when I helped to organise a ‘Meet the Agents’ session, I remember them all saying that no one wants to hear the self-indulgent whining or anger of a mother of young children. Certainly there was a bit of an uproar when Rachel Cusk wrote about this in non-fictional form back in 2001 and this book has had very angry 1 star reviews, which seem to prove the agents right: ‘nothing happens’; ‘boring, bleak, the story is all too familiar’; ‘bilious and tiresome’. And yet there are queues at the library to borrow this book and five star reviews too – and I personally had tears of recognition in my eyes when I finished reading it.

We might not all have Claire Kilroy’s talent at describing those moments of anger, confusion, mourning… but also all-encompassing, fierce love. There are some scenes and dialogues that are both recognisable and funny – the trip to Ikea, for instance, the running late for everything, the awkward socialising at the mother-and-child groups – while others are recognisable and heart-stopping (losing a child in a shopping centre, having a feverish baby late at night and waiting for the doctor to call back). The resentful anger is of course deliberate, showing us that we can’t believe everything that the narrator says. Yet that lack of full credibility does not make the things she says any less true.

I heard that there are some articles in papers that blame books such as these for the drop of birth rates. Women are put off having children because it is so difficult, they say: not because they no longer have an extended family to support them, or because it is expensive, or because some husbands are still not sharing the burden equally, or because employers and childcare options are still not great. No, of course not, it’s just these silly women authors complaining how hard they’ve got it!

Ah, but she does it so elegantly – and in second person POV, addressing the infant (Sailor) directly, in sweet complicity. It may sound reproachful at times, but the anger is never directed at the baby.

It was all so stupid. So manual and relentless and stupid… It was all about killing the days when you were small, getting them over and done with. Before you were born, it was all about living them.

I remember those long days and the utter boredom and relentless repetitiveness, but of course once the children grow up and leave home, you feel that it’s all gone by in a flash. And then there was the quote below, which reminded me exactly what I said to my mother, who refused to let me go to all-night parties when I was in my late teens and still living at home, for fear it would kill off my brain cells – at the time when my brain cells were all dead because of the babies waking up every two hours at night.

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.

The loss of identity – being forever known as X’s Mother at the school gates and beyond – is described perfectly as the narrowing of one’s world, and maybe my sense of humour is strange, but I find this passage very funny too:

When you were born, you didn’t enter my world: I entered yours. I crawled through the small door that had appeared in the wall and there you were, oh my God, perfect. It took me some time to realise your father was no longer with us, not quite. He was there in the beginning but at some point wandered off, stepping out to make a phone call from which he never fully hung up, popping his head in from time to time to see how we were doing, would we like a cup of tea?

I know many will say that the husband’s passivity is exaggerated, but I can vouch for the veracity of that portrayal – so many of my friends have experienced that kind of behaviour from their partners. Even the well-intentioned ones. And of course there is her friend, a stay-at-home dad, who shows that there are other types of fathers as well – although is he real or a case of wishful thinking, an imaginary companion that will help her get through her feelings of extreme isolation and feeling unprepared/clumsy.

In the final section, anger gives way to catharsis, as the mother realises that there is never enough time, that the relationship is too precious, that all this love has to go somewhere… even though we may forget from time to time. So, in the end, I found the book uplifting, despite my worries before reading it (and, if I’m being honest, at various points while reading it too)

I read this book in one sitting, spending the morning in bed to do so, and neglecting the many things on my To Do list, because it was such a poignant and visceral read. But also because I’ve survived that stage, my children have left home and I can afford to so for the first time in 21 years.

You can read other reviews of this book by Claire McAlpine, Jacqui and Eric Karl Anderson (Lonesome Reader).