Soldier, Sailor, and The Wren, The Wren make this year’s shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction
Claire Kilroy and Anne Enright have both made this year’s shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Kilroy’s Soldier, Sailor (Faber), her first novel in ten years, and Enright’s The Wren, The Wren (Vintage) join the list of six books in the running for the prestigious award.
In her first novel for over a decade, Claire Kilroy takes us deep into the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love for a new life with a seismic change in identity, she vividly realises the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of love, autonomy and creativity.
This is a meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A generational saga that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women in the face of promises false and true. Above all, it is an exploration of the love between mother and daughter – sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent.
Anne Enright and Claire Kilroy join the list of six authors including: Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville (Canongate); River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure (Duckworth Books); Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan (Penguin), and Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (Vintage).
For more on this year’s prizes, please see here.
Listen to Claire Kilroy on Burning Books
Last year Claire Kilroy talked with Ruth McKee about the genesis of Soldier, Sailor which took over a decade to emerge, how early motherhood affected her creativity, and the profound rewiring that happens to you as an artist and as a person when you have a child. You can find the full episode here, or wherever you listen.
