Any child-free MNers read "Soldier Sailor" by Claire Kilroy?

[KStockHERO]

What were your thoughts?

I'm about half way through and, to me so far, it's like a manifesto against motherhood.

It's beautifully written and incredibly evocative. It's made me feel very grateful for my child-free life 🤣

I haven't, but will look out for it!

Looks great from the reviews, is anyone up for a book club?

I haven’t but I can’t see anything appealing to me. It sounds like an endless diatribe about how hard it is to be a mum of a young child - just not interesting to me at all.

Just wait until the end!

I am not child free but I thought it was incredible - real and so insightful and also funny.

And the end- I think it will change your mind about how it presents motherhood.

@fitzwilliamdarcy Exactly - a manifesto against motherhood 🤣

@fundbund I finished it last night. I don't really think it presented motherhood very differently in the end TBH. The focus shifted away from monotony and boredom and frustration, but I don't think it presented motherhood in a particularly positive light.
The reviews talked about a happy ending but this wasn't how I read it at all. I don't think it did have a particularly happy ending 🫠

Oh really?

I thought the end was absolutely beautiful. Made me cry.

It obviously wasn't a positive portrayal of motherhood, but I did think it was a beautiful piece of writing about motherhood and all of its challenges and the beauty of her love for her child.

motherhood, like life in general, isn't a solely positive experience. It's complex and challenging and shit and wonderful at the same time and I think she did a brilliant job conveying it.

It would be pretty boring to read a book about a mother having a simply lovely time and finding motherhood a breeze.

I found the end quite stifling. While I understood what she was going for (to communicate the depth, breadth, length and inexplicability of love for Sailor), I found the sense of life-long, inescapable connection she felt for Sailir really, really suffocating both from her POV and Sailor's.

And I also had a sense of deja vu at the end too. I mean, on the one hand, Soldier's life didn't look quite as terrible as in the early days, in the early part of the book. But, on the other, we left her sitting on the kitchen floor while Sailor was being irritating and she worried about being late with the evening meal which she was presumably making for her husband's return from work. So, not much had fundamentally actually changed for her, things were just a bit less shit.

For some reason, I can't edit my last post. But I also should add that I found the ever-presence of death in the end parts of the book quite suffocating too. That Sailor's arrival had made Soldier very aware of death as something quite omnipresent in her life felt incredibly bleak. She talks about this new awareness of death throughout the book but it became particularly visible in the last chapter(s) which, for me, didn't at all fit with the supposed happy ending.

Yes I know what you mean.

I also feel a bit bad as I realise you have posted this in the child free section and I'm not child free but it came up in my active threads and I just saw it was about a book I loved which was why it caught my eye.

I think that the move you have for a child IS all encompassing and suffocating though. She wasn't trying to sugar coat that, it's something you have to cope with as a parent. I felt when I became a mother that the stakes were higher in everything I did as I had to think about the consequences not only for me but for my son and that is stifling. But it's also beautiful because it comes from a place of love.

And I think having a child made me much more aware of death and mortality. So I got that part of it too.

I loved this book, thought it was beautifully written. It did reflect some of the reasons I am child free by choice - that I’d find motherhood stiffling, and worry that I wouldn’t cope mentally.

I mainly seethed with anger at her utterly awful husband, and thought happily of friends who have great partners who are great, equal parents and sadly of those with similarly shit husbands.

Yes i agree the husband was an utter shit.

Made me appreciate mine much more!

@fundbund Thanks and please don't feel bad. Its really interesting to read your perspective. I didn't post on the main board because I didn't want it to descend into mud-slinging. Plus, the book really powerfully spoke to me as a child-free woman. I knew it'd chime with mothers (as you've attested) but I thought it was really powerful how a novel about motherhood could speak so viscerally to someone child-free.

@DownThePubWithStevieNicks Absolutely. What a dick he was. But I was also really frustrated with Soldier and how readily she just put up with him and forgave him for his shitty behaviour. I get the point - Soldier was too wrapped up with Sailor, too stressed, too depressed to consider anything else (like leaving him or not just continuing to be the default parent), but I felt like shaking her for being such a doormat.
Its also part of the reason I found the end quite suffocating. She's still with him at the end of the book but doesn't indicate that his behaviour is any different. So isn't Soldier just signing herself up for years and years and years of looking after this man-child and being default/sole parent to Sailor? And what kind of example does that set for Sailor? What's an utterly depressing life we leave her facing.

Never heard of it till I read this thread, and no, I won't be reading it. I have zero interest in reading about motherhood or children or anything of the sort.

Listening now. I think it’s fairly hideous in lots of ways. Not sure I’ll finish it - a waste of an audible credit 🙁

I guess I haven’t got to the funny bit yet?

I was really confused by the reviews which said it was funny.
I didn't find it funny at all, anywhere.

I really enjoyed this book. It made me sad in some ways that I don’t have children, the love they felt for one another in that ‘taking care of you’ way. But mostly made me glad that I’m child free- her lack of agency, how suffocating that relationship was, how much she had to sacrifice her own needs and identity. Agree that the husband was a dick. I passed it on to my sister after (who has a small baby) and she said it was very realistic so I thought it was good at giving me an insight into an experience I will never have. Agree it wasn’t funny though.

I’ve returned it and got my credit back!