Soldier Sailor, Claire Kilroy
Soldier Sailor, Claire Kilroy
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Soldier Sailor

Author: Claire Kilroy

Narrator: Simone Collins

Unabridged: 6 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/04/2024


Synopsis

FINALIST for the WOMEN’S PRIZE for FICTION * One of Vogue’s Best Books of the Year

Award-winning author Claire Kilroy’s “lyrical and incisive” (The New York Times Book Review) novel that reads with the pace of a thriller and is filled with astute and witty observations of life with a young child.

Soldier Sailor takes readers deep inside the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love with a seismic shift in identity, Claire Kilroy conjures the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of equality, autonomy, and creativity.

Soldier Sailor is a tale of boundless love and relentless battle, a bedtime story to a son, Sailor, recounting their early years together. Spending her days in baby groups, playgrounds, and supermarkets, Soldier doesn’t know who she is anymore. She hardly sees her husband, who has taken to working late most nights. A chance encounter with a former colleague feels like a lifeline to the person she used to be but can hardly remember.

Tender and harrowing, Kilroy’s modern masterpiece “hums with poetry, insight, and humor...full of truths so sharp and beautiful readers will need to take a breath” (Booklist, starred review).

About Claire Kilroy

Claire Kilroy is the author of five novels including Soldier SailorAll SummerTenderwire, and The Devil I Know. She was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2004 and has been shortlisted for many other prizes, including the Irish Novel of the Year and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. She studied at Trinity College and lives in Dublin.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joachim

4,5 Some thoughts: - five years ago I was sitting in a bar with two friends - who, like me, recently became fathers- and my penny dropped. They were complaining about nagging wives, the complex reality of parenthood and all these stupid chores that entails it. I suddenly realized that I wasn't like th......more

Goodreads review by Ceecee

He, the son, is Sailor, she, the tiger spirited mother is Soldier who will die to protect him but in the early exhausting, confusing days of motherhood she needs to be ‘at ease’. The two are joined by an everlasting bond but the strain of what she’s lost especially in her former working life identit......more

Goodreads review by Flo

Update : Now shortlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2024 - Dissapointed about this one and the fact that my top 2 books from the longlist were ignored. Such a safe / commercial shortlist. Not a single book from what I know that it is a little bit unconventional. Longlisted for Women's Prize for F......more

Goodreads review by Peter

Wow, this was intense. I'll never experience motherhood, but after reading this novel I'm quite relieved about that fact. Claire Kilroy imagines it all as psychological horror in this raw and visceral tale. It's told by a woman, Soldier, speaking to her infant son, Sailor. Parenthood has completely t......more


Quotes

"Simone Collins’s narration benefits from her intimate and persuasive tone, as well as the lovely lilt of her Irish accent. Her performance resonates as her tone, pace, and intonation reveal the struggling mom’s love...This brief, powerful depiction of motherhood rings true and creates an immersive listening experience."