Claire Kilroy

Soldier Sailor

Named a Best Book by The Sunday Times (London), The Irish Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph (London), The New Statesman (UK), The Irish Independent, and The Independent An exquisite and provocative exploration of motherhood that reads with the pace of a thriller and is filled with astute and witty observations, from award-winning Irish author Claire Kilroy. In her first novel in over a decade, Claire Kilroy takes readers deep into the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love with a seismic shift in identity, Kilroy conjures the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of equality, autonomy, and creativity. Soldier Sailor is a tale of boundless love and relentless battle, a mother’s bedtime story to her son, Sailor, recounting their early years together. Caught in the grip of her toddler’s seemingly endless terrible twos, Soldier doesn’t know who she is anymore. She spends her days in baby groups, playgrounds, and supermarkets. She hardly sees her husband, who has taken to working late most nights. A chance encounter with a former colleague feels like a lifeline to the person she used to be. Tender and harrowing, Kilroy’s modern masterpiece portrays parenthood in all its agony and ardent joy.

A Novel

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mileHe made a crooked deal and he blew a crooked pileHe dug a crooked hole And he sank the crooked isleAnd they all went to hell in a stew of crooked bile.The Devil I Know is a thrilling novel of greed and hubris, set against the backdrop of a brewing international debt crisis. Told by Tristram, in the form of a mysterious testimony, it recounts his return home after a self-imposed exile only to find himself trapped as a middle man played on both sides - by a grotesque builder he's known since childhood on the one hand, and a shadowy businessman he's never met on the other. Caught between them, as an overblown property development begins in his home town of Howth, it follows Tristram's dawning realisation that all is not well.From a writer unafraid to take risks, The Devil I Know is a bold, brilliant and disturbing piece of storytelling.

The Devil I Know

"Eva Tyne leaves her home in Ireland for New York to play in the New Amsterdam Chamber Orchestra. She collapses after her solo debut, checks herself out of the hospital prematurely, and embarks on a chaotic and dangerous odyssey. She falls in love with a mysterious man and becomes obsessed with a rare violin of dubious provenance, for which she must pay in cash. But consumed by obsession, her pursuit of the violin becomes a nightmare of paranoia: Haunted by the ghost of her father, racked with jealousy, and unsure whom she can trust, Eva is pitched into a desperate psychological conundrum as her desires threaten to destroy her." -- from the publisher.

Tenderwire

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile He made a crooked deal and he blew a crooked pile He dug a crooked hole And he sank the crooked isle And they all went to hell in a stew of crooked bile. The Devil I Know is a thrilling novel of greed and hubris, set against the backdrop of a brewing international debt crisis. Told by Tristram, in the form of a mysterious testimony, it recounts his return home after a self-imposed exile only to find himself trapped as a middle man played on both sides - by a grotesque builder he's known since childhood on the one hand, and a shadowy businessman he's never met on the other. Caught between them, as an overblown property development begins in his home town of Howth, it follows Tristram's dawning realisation that all is not well. From a writer unafraid to take risks, The Devil I Know is a bold, brilliant and disturbing piece of storytelling.

Anna Hunt has lost her memory and is on the run. From who and what she is unsure, but trapped in the present she seems certain of only one thing - she is somehow linked to the stolen painting currently being restored in the National Gallery. In a wonderfully unsettling first novel, Claire Kilroy manages to combine beautiful, poetic prose with the menacing atmosphere of a thriller as she explores themes of memory, violence, art and escape. 'A compelling read. The surprises are real and yet so subtly tracked . . . It's a thriller, a confession and a love story framed by a meditation on the arts.' Margaret Reynolds, The Times

All Summer

In exile after being ousted from the family castle, recovering alcoholic Tristram St. Lawrence finds himself back in Dublin when an old acquaintance pitches a development project that his sponsor, a mysterious businessman, supports.

Set in the Dublin of the mid 1980s - gripped by a heroin epidemic and light years from the post EU economic boom of today - All Names Have Been Changed tells the story of a small group of mature students on a writing course at Trinity, who become dangerously obsessed with their tutor, a notorious writer. Brilliantly exploring the shifting group dynamic, as events spiral ever further out of control, this is a novel of considerable verve and ambition. Following earlier forays into the worlds of art restoration and classical music, it is further evidence of a writer with a natural gift for narrative and atmosphere.

Claire Kilroy

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