‘Soldier Sailor’ by Claire Kilroy    (2023) – 232 pages

‘Soldier Sailor’ is not a novel about soldiers or sailors but about the many, many traumas and only rare glories of the birthing process and the later excruciating care and feeding of this helpless little creature, a new human being.

I had never even considered how fortunate I, as a male, was to never to have to go through this ordeal of having a baby.

Some people might think this is a book mainly for women, but guys can read it to find out what early human life is really like. In fact this is probably a novel for us novices, because women who have been through this know it all too well already.

This is a powerful harrowing intense personal account of what actual motherhood must be like.

The soldier is the mother, the sailor is her son. The mother is talking to her four year-old son.

“Here’s my ennobling truth, Sailor: women risk death to give life to their babies. They endure excruciating pain, their inner parts torn, then they pick themselves up no matter what state they are in, no matter how much blood they’ve lost, and they tend to their infants.”

Being a male, I never really considered the grueling process that a woman goes through to bring aboard a new human, both before and after birth. The details of that process are all there in ‘Soldier Sailor’.

Her husband and the boy’s father, like most, is of little help. He stays at his office late, claiming he has important work to do. Her husband’s office job was his Get Out of Jail card, his all-purpose excuse not to help her with his son. He criticizes the mother and she answers:

“Look, if the level of care I’m giving our son is unsatisfactory, feel free to step in. Feel free to do a whole ten minutes of parenting. Don’t let me stop you.”

Meanwhile the care and feeding of her son must go on.

“I put the spoon on the plate and my head in my hands. I was so tired. I was so tired and you were so hungry. But you wouldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep. Mother and child.”

The care and feeding of her toddler son is dragging her down.

“All winter I had been sick. A cold, a cough, a virus, another virus. The mother of a toddler cannot take a sick day.”

Later she tells her four year old son:

“You will cast off your maternal shackles, venture forth and fuck up, and that’s part of the game, the glorious game we are here on this blessed Earth to play,…”

Grade:    A