Since Rachel Cusk’s ground-breaking memoir A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, was published in 2001, books about the reality of motherhood have proliferated. Recently, however, the subject of whether to become a mother or not at all has been foregrounded in fiction. Cusk’s book, in her own words, “set out to describe the physical events of childbirth and early motherhood” and she was castigated for it — with one reviewer suggesting that if everyone read her book, the propagation of the human race would basically end as it made the whole business sound so unpleasant.
“Complaining” about motherhood is now commonplace, as it should be — from Mumsnet talk forums to bestselling fiction. Claire Kilroy’s coruscating novel Soldier Sailor (2023) is possibly the most striking new example: the narrator briefly leaves her newborn son in a forest glade after a vitriolic row with her husband. She believes she is protecting her child from the bleakness she feels inside by abandoning him, albeit temporarily. One reviewer described Soldier Sailor, approvingly, as “a book-length panic attack”. Another has called it “one of the finest novels published this year”. The intensity of motherhood as an experience seems to be summed up by the narrator addressing her child toward the novel’s conclusion with the words: “I wasn’t scared of dying until you were born.”
