Only Human - Hardcover

Only Human ends with some of the arguments and situations in motion, others unaddressed, a few resolved. What is surprising is the amount of stored laughter and banked-up optimism you retain from the wreckage of these fictional lives. Reading this book is like plugging your emotional battery-charger into the mains. Its crisply original, unshowy languge tingles with static; its insight jolts dangerously; its gags spark and sputter cleverly. Yet Only Human leaves you feeling warm and solid despite and because of your own - ultimately - limited capacities (Saturday Telegraph)

Boyt is rare among contemporary authors in combining heartbreaking descriptions of the extremes of human unhappiness with a deliciously ironic humour, and an acute observation of the offbeat life in cafes, shops and streets... ONLY HUMAN is both joyously original and deeply touching. And Marjorie herself is full of interesting contrasts - a mix of frailty and valour, waywardness and professionalism, vulnerability and daring. I defy any reader not to root for her (Wendy Perriam)

An engagingly written novel punctuated, unexpectedly, by moments of humour... the telling is a quiet revelation - gentle, quirky, affecting, one is haunted by Marjorie's tale long after the novel's final page has been turned (Zembla)

A fresh and wholly idiosyncratic take on life (Independent)

This is subtly done: there are reservoirs of grief here, but they are sounded not plumbed, their presence registering on the surface as evidence of emptiness below... Despite this the novel does not depress and there is some startling sharp humour... it is hard not to be won over (TLS)

She has a deft touch... Boyt is a dab hand at dialogue... sharp and realistic vision (The Sunday Times (Penelope Lively))

This is a perceptive, original and moving novel (Mail on Sunday)

Her most self-assured book yet, by turns funny and sad (Telegraph Magazine)

... the book's insight and wit keep the reader (at least, this reader) interested (Sunday Telegraph)

A sharp and funny portrait of people trying to find connections as their lives unravel around them (Observer)

Marjorie Hemming, marriage guidance counsellor, craves concord and harmony the way other people need cigarettes. She longs for all her quarrelling couples to be reconciled, and is delighted when people start to mistake her for an angelic nurse in a hospital t.v. drama series. But her alarmingly skinny teenage daughter has secrets she won't reveal, and some couples just refuse to kiss and make up. Even stalwart Nurse Rose is acting out of character as she launches herself into an obviously doomed marriage. Marjorie has knitted her world together with care - is it starting to fray?