Kitty Byng

The Body Is a Murderer

Kroppen er en morder

We can’t put it off any longer, I tell Nina. What can’t we put off? Nina says. We have to get down to making babies, I say. Soon I’ll be old: soon I’ll be too tangled up with varicose veins to be able to make a baby with this body of mine. I’m getting older, I say. Nina looks at me. My eyes are wet with tears, because my heart.

Nina and Kitty are married and live an active life in Oslo, with careers and good friends. If they want to have a child, the time to start is now. It’ll take more to make it happen than a romantic evening or two. They have to make a choice themselves if anything is going to happen. And life is so good just the way it is. They start to click around on a donor website, just to take a look.

What does trying to have a child entail? Will it corrode their relationship? Is Kitty’s body even capable of bearing a child? And why does the thought of new life make Kitty think of death?

The Body Is a Murderer is a complex love story about Nina and Kitty; an urgent and intimate examination of the life we have and the life we make.

Byng kroppen er en morder 9788202619107
Byng, kitty photo victoria stewart
Photo: Victoria Stewart

Kitty Byng (b. 1980) lives in Oslo. She works as a psychologist and with the next of kin to inmates in prisons. In 2014, Byng started her private practice The Student Psychologist, after having written several articles about students’ mental health for the webpage Studenttorget. The Body is a Murderer is her first novel.