Author(s): Kristine Naess

Fiction

Bea Britt lives alone in her grandmother's house in Oslo. Early one morning, there are people out in the garden, and drama unfolding on her living room TV. Volunteers are scouring the neighbouring woods looking for Emilie, a twelve-year-old girl who has disappeared. Emilie's rucksack is found in Bea's garden. Bea is first a suspect, then a witness, and finally a potential second victim. As the mystery over Emilie's disappearance deepens, Bea's spiralling doubts and suspicions take over. The mystery of Emilie's disappearance and Bea's story is intricately bound to the lives of two other women: her grandmother Cecilie, a troubled 1930s housewife in therapy whose marriage is on the rocks, bringing the abuse and neglect she suffered as a child to the surface. And Beate, a young university student who visits Bea, desperate for love, but plagued by insecurity and uncertainty. Only Human is an urgent and rich novel about enduring oneself and others, delicately revealing of the choices that shape a human life, about what is needed when life wears thin, and the illuminating power of love.