Soldier Sailor

Oh this novel! Powerful beyond description. I read it in a day, holding my breath, heart bursting. This is essential reading for anyone who has ever felt swallowed alive by caring for a child, and essential reading for everyone who hasn't.

One story of one mother and her infant in contemporary Dublin that seems both particular and emblematic. It deals with love – the narrator loves her baby and, as much as she can, her husband. The novel, however, shows, like no other book I have read or can imagine, what it is like to care for a baby day-in, day-out, plus nights. It mixes pure, painful realism with an incantatory sound. This book might not be news for many women; for blokes, it might raise the hair on your head.

Raw, funny and angry, it is a novel that provokes a huge range of emotions in the reader: sorrow for the agony that the new mum endures, laughter and tenderness, and awe at the elemental and universal aspects of parenthood.

A beautiful and harrowing novel about what it can feel like to be a first-time mother.

The best account of early motherhood I've ever read. Claire Kilroy is a rare genius.

This. Book. It is the most visceral and raw portrayal of new motherhood and loss of identity that we have ever read. Kilroy is utterly majestic, delving deep into the complexities of relationships and the human psyche [...] You are in her mind from beginning to end, and it's an astonishing experience.