The Other Mother

The searing, provocative story of a mother with an explosive secret: the existence of a new friend, whose son looks unmistakably like her own.

“A darkly absorbing portrait of a woman in crisis, engulfed by the complexities of biology, queer family and motherhood.” —Stylist

Silje Marie has been keeping a secret from her wife: she loves one of her sons more than the other. In their sleepy suburb of Oslo, she has given Henry and Olav the childhood she herself never had: organic cotton clothing folded into tidy drawers, a house tucked at the edge of the forest, and long summers scented with apple pies baked alongside Grandma in a sunlit kitchen.

But when the family prepares for a renovation and Silje Marie stays behind to clear out the house, long-buried thoughts begin to resurface. Having only given birth to Olav, she is haunted by the sense that only one of her children truly feels like her own—an admission so corrosive it would devastate her wife, Helene, if ever spoken aloud. Then there is the other mother: a new friend she has cultivated in secret, whose son’s resemblance to Henry is impossible to ignore. Silje Marie is increasingly certain the boys must share the same sperm donor, but uncovering such a truth could dismantle the home she has fought so hard to build.

Spiky, daring, and feverishly intense, this novel interrogates the nuanced complexities of maternal guilt, longing, and what parents and children owe to one another.