A language of limbs

A language of limbs

Dylin Hardcastle

Book - 2025

"A beautifully inventive, tender novel-the author's first to be published in the U.S.-following two lives as they almost intersect over three heartbreaking yet euphoric decades. A Language of Limbs is a breathtaking spin on a will-they-won't-they love story; it is a tender epic that explores the weight of a choice, the love of community, and how joy is found in even the darkest corners. Newcastle, Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: to give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unknown or stay the course? In alternating chapters, poetically called Limb One and Limb Two, we trace the two versions of a life that follow. In Limb One, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and... is kicked from her home; in continuing to run, she chooses a new life for herself. She lands at a queer communal home in Sydney called Uranian House, where she meets the people who will forever become her family. Meanwhile, in Limb Two, a teenage girl pushes down her lustful dreams of her best friend and eventually makes her way to a university in Sydney to study English literature. During pivotal moments, the physical space between Limb One and Limb Two closes and they almost intersect-like when they each meet the first great loves of their lives in 1977 at a protest, or when, almost a decade later, they are both rushed to the hospital with only a curtain between them. Through the AIDS crisis-and from classrooms to art galleries, beds to bars, and hospitals to homes-we witness these two lives shadow each other until, finally, they collide"--

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Subjects
Teenage girls > Fiction.
Sexual minorities > Fiction.
Nineteen seventies > Fiction.
Child abuse > Fiction.
AIDS (Disease) > Fiction.
Self-doubt > Fiction.
Self-acceptance > Fiction.
Interpersonal relations > Fiction.
Australia > Fiction.
Queer fiction.
Bildungsromans.
Historical fiction.
Novels.
Genres
Queer fiction
Bildungsromans
Historical fiction
Novels
Published
New York : Dutton 2025.
Language
English
Main Author
Dylin Hardcastle (author)
Edition
First American edition
Physical Description
289 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780593852712
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

One night in Australia in 1972, a teenage girl's life story bifurcates into two "limbs." In limb one, she has sex with the girl next door and is violently ejected from her home by her parents. In limb two, she dreams of the act but suppresses her desire and conforms to social norms. Hardcastle (Below Deck, 2020) chooses the perfect metaphor for their story, because though the two limbs diverge, they remain attached to the same body. As the two versions unfold, one a marginalized, queer existence and the other a married, heteronormative life, they also parallel and converge in touchstone moments: love, sex, loss, and the AIDS epidemic. Of the image of her body in a wedding dress, the protagonist says, "It is two things at once . . . I imagine another picture, another story, unfolding somewhere else." Vivid and poignant, with flashes of the experimental and poetic, the novel serves as a record of queer life in Australia in the '70s and '80s and asks us to consider how and why we love.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Hardcastle's stunning debut follows a 15-year-old girl in 1972 Australia across two alternate timelines: one where she embraces her queerness and one where she rejects it. In the former version, the unnamed narrator is beaten by her father and kicked out of her home after her parents catch her having sex with her best friend. She's rescued from living on the street by a man named Dave, who affectionately nicknames her Little Dave and invites her into his queer found family. As the years pass, she's surrounded by joy and learns to accept herself despite such bitter injustices and catastrophes as AIDS, which ravages Dave's household. In the second timeline, the narrator suppresses her feelings for her best friend and sabotages their friendship by dating a boy. After university, she falls in love a writer named Thomas and they move in together. Though she's happy with how easy it is to conform to a conventional life, she remains troubled by her lingering feelings for women, and her life with Thomas is surprisingly and tragically upended by the AIDS crisis. Hardcastle handily crafts two distinct voices for the alternating story lines, revealing the ripple effects of choosing one path over another. It's a captivating display of how one decision can shape a life. (June)

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