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Claire Kilroy is the author of four previous novels, including Tenderwire 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 prize for fiction. This year Kilroy returns with her first novel in over a decade, Soldier Sailor, a descent into the early days of motherhood told through a woman's monologue to her baby son Sailor. Exploring the clash of fierce love for a new life with a seismic change in identity, Kilroy has crafted a vivid portrait of the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of love, autonomy and creativity. Soldier Sailor is shortlisted for Eason Novel of the Year 2023. (Photo credit: Dara Mac Dónaill )
Tell us a bit about your latest novel?
Soldier Sailor is a mother talking to her sleeping child explaining what was going on during those years he was too young to understand or remember the events around him. She tells him of her love, but also of how difficult, how isolating she found it when motherhood ended her old life. Nothing much happens; one of the main characters, Sailor, has no dialogue. The whole experience is a non-event from the outside, but when you are that soldier pushing the pram, my, what a psychodrama it is.
Where did the inspiration for this novel come from? What is the story behind its conception?
Conception, ha. I had no time to write for a few years after my child was born - the country was deep in recession, childcare was unaffordable, novelists are unsalaried, and I missed my old self so painfully that I feared I'd never be that person again. At the same time, I was besotted by my child. When I did finally get some time, I lay down, like Yeats, where all the ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of my heart, and I just cried a bit and wrote a bit and cried a bit more and wrote a bit more, and it took many years of cry-writing, cryting, as there were so many interruptions. But eventually, I fashioned a narrative out of love and rage. It is all fiction, but the emotions are all true.
What do you hope readers will take away from your narrative?
It is so easy to dismiss a mother and her work, and a father and his - one of the main characters is a stay-at-home dad. I had no idea what minding an infant involved and had regarded it as easy, unchallenging (I am mortified to admit that), so I hope I have revealed how demanding it is, but also how rewarding, never mind how important. I hope more fathers will get involved in raising children because it changes you, it remakes you, you become more compassionate. I don't think Trump and Putin would be the awful tyrants they are had they cared for, well, anyone. It doesn't have to be a child, just any person or creature who needs care.
How does it feel to be on this shortlist amongst so many other brilliant authors?
Oh my God, what a year for the Irish novel. Even with the shortlist expanded to eight, some wonderful writers have been left out this year: Mike McCormack, Kathleen MacMahon, Sarah Gilmartin, Darragh McKeon, Nicole Flattery, Naoise Dolan, Megan Nolan, Neil Jordan, Emma Donoghue.
Ireland is a literary powerhouse. Why do you think this is?
The Arts Council has a writer, Sarah Bannan, heading up literature and, as a writer, she knows what writers need (money, being left alone), so she has done her best to put that in place. Also, Irish kids are schooled in poetry in a manner, I have noticed, not all nationalities are. Poetry stands to you in unquantifiable ways. Speaking the poems you learned in secondary school is like reciting a spell. I think we're alert, as a body of people, to the occult power of language. During the financial crash, Neil Jordan pointed out that the banks had failed us, the construction industry had failed us, the Church had failed us but the culture industry had never failed us. Irish people's faith in the arts was made manifest during Covid when there was a real attempt to protect artists. In the past, in a crisis, the arts were the first to get cut; instead, the Arts Council got a funding boost and the Basic Income for Artists pilot scheme was introduced. And now here we are, thriving.
Who are your favourite Irish writers?
Are you trying to start a fight?
What An Post Irish Book Awards shortlisted book is next on your to-be-read pile?
You are trying to start a fight...
Explore the Eason Novel of the Year Shortlist here.