Kilroy

In 2015, Claire Kilroy published an essay in the Irish arts anthology Winter Papers, F for Phone, in which she described how the birth of her son, Lawrence, three years earlier had robbed her of the ability to write: “Writing used to be the answer to all my problems – it enabled me to make something out of the bad things in my life, to use them – but now I can no longer write. So I can no longer fix my life.”Finally, after an 11-year gap since her last book, she has found a way to use those “angry few years”, transmuting…

Claire Kilroy’s first novel in 10 years is a whole-body experience: reading it was, for me, like being elbowed through a rip in the space-time continuum back into the chaotic, exhausting, lovesick fog of the baby and toddler years. Anyone who has endured “the blurred days and the blurred nights” of early motherhood – or indeed anyone contemplating the possibility of embarking on them – be warned. You’re looking at a book-length panic attack.The novel is brief but utterly remorseless – it comes at you full-throttle, as if…