This reading group guide for SOLDIER SAILOR includes an introduction, discussion questions and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

In her first novel in over ten years, Claire Kilroy paints an incising portrait of motherhood and marriage. Soldier Sailor is an endearing and anguished tale of boundless love and relentless battle. Told as a bedtime story to a son, Sailor, recounting their early years together, the unnamed narrator charts the contours of motherhood and marriage. Spending her days in baby groups, playgrounds and supermarkets, Soldier doesn’t know who she is anymore. Unsupported by her husband, Soldier tries to get a foothold on life and presents an excoriating depiction of early motherhood that is sure to entrance every reader. In tender, deep and witty prose, Kilroy portrays parenthood in all its loneliness and replenishing joy.

Discussion Questions

Consider the perspective of the book. Why does the author address the book directly to Sailor, and does this direct address to Sailor impact the tenor of the book? Discuss how a different point of view might change your reading experience.

While the father supports the family financially, he appears being quite emotionally unsupportive and distant. Discuss what may have contributed to his lack of emotional involvement and why he does not play a more active role in childrearing and house care.

The mother in the novel references her thin membrane—“the membrane between coping and not” (38). Discuss which points the membrane appears thinnest and moments when it seems impermeable. What happens when the membrane is at its thinnest?

The author captures the ineffability of her love for Sailor at various points, like when she likens their love to a song that she “couldn’t quite remember how [it] went but . . . couldn’t quite forget either” (78). Discuss the moments when her love for Sailor is most salient. Do the palpable moments of frustration the mother feels impact her love for Sailor?

Chapter eight is the shortest section in the book. Discuss what is revealed in this chapter and what is left out. What does this short section symbolise about Soldier’s parents’ marriage?

In the first and last chapter, the narrator pronounces that what she and Sailor share is temporary. What is she referring to, and why does she describe it as temporary?

Imagine the future for Sailor and his family. What do you think his relationship with his parents is like throughout various stages of his life? How well do you imagine him heeding his mother’s warnings and suggestions?

Discuss with your group “late capitalism’s commercialisation of motherhood” (109), a concept the mother tries to question while shopping at IKEA. How has motherhood been commercialised, and where is this commercialisation most apparent? How has this condition been exacerbated or lessened by shifting gender roles?

What words best characterise the narrator? Is she neurotic, compassionate, caring, cruel? How do you think she has changed before motherhood and marriage, and after becoming a mother?

Compare and contrast the relationship between the narrator and her husband with the one she has with her male friend from the park. What qualities do the men share, and how do the men differ? What traits does the narrator seem drawn to or repelled by in either man?

What types of emotions do you notice throughout the novel, and how are the characters influenced by these emotions?

Despite being directed towards Sailor, the novel adeptly speaks to the reader and conveys the anguish often experienced by mothers as they contend with gendered expectations of labour and care. What type of labour is expected from and completed by the men in the book? How does this direct address to Sailor influence him or what is expected from him?

Discuss how this novel has influenced your understanding of motherhood and marriage.

Why do you think the author chose to leave the narrator nameless?

Colm Tóibín describes Soldier Sailor as a book that “women would enjoy but men would not only benefit from but need badly.” Why do you think men need this book?

Enhance Your Book Club

Watch Claire Kilroy in conversation with Colm Tóibín in “The Art of Reading” book club series: https://youtu.be/Cc3QNZpKD-A?si=IxKfFUEoU9z536X_

Claire conceived of the idea of Soldier Sailor when she received a “One Line a Day” diary while in the maternity ward, in which she started writing notes to her son. Join the challenge and write a line a day in your own five-year memory book.

Read other novels in the “on motherhood” canon, like The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante and Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.