A Language of Limbs
Dylin Hardcastle
A Language of Limbs
Dylin Hardcastle
The first love of a teenage girl is a powerful thing, particularly when the object of that desire is her best friend, also a girl. It's the kind of power that could implode a family, a friendship, a life. On a quiet summer night in Newcastle, 1972, a choice must be made: to act upon these desires, or suppress them? To live an openly queer life, or to try desperately not to?
Over the following three decades, these two lives almost intersect in pivotal moments, the distance between them at times drawing so thin they nearly collide. Against the backdrop of an era including Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, we see these two lives ebb and flow, with joy and grief and loss and desire, until at last they come together in the most beautiful and surprising of fashions.
A Language of Limbs is about love and how it's policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak - the jokes you tell as you're dying and the ways laughing at a funeral softens the edges of our grief. An unashamed celebration of queer life in all its vibrancy and colour, this story finds the humanity in all of us, and demands we claim our futures for ourselves.
Review
Holly Mortlock
I finished reading A Language of Limbs in one sitting, barely moving between the couch and the kettle. It left an aftertaste of resilient joy and deep grief – which are some of my favourite feelings to linger in – but it was also utterly absorbing.
Initially set in 1970s suburban Australia, this latest novel by Dylin Hardcastle follows the parallel narratives of two unnamed young women. Each of them is faced with a life-altering choice; to embrace their queerness openly, and forge forward in that truth, or to take the silent route, locking away authentic love.
‘Limb One’ is kicked out of home, eventually landing in a small, close knit LGBTQIA+ community at Uranian House in Sydney, surrounded by a new family, with a new identity. ‘Limb Two’ hides early rejection from her first sapphic love and best friend deep within herself, while navigating a heterosexual marriage and trying to ignore the feelings that occasionally threaten to overwhelm what she has built.
Both people are haunted by their past choices and afraid to be known. How they carve out their lives amongst the backdrop of three decades of queer history results in a deeply moving and sometimes heartbreaking story enhanced by Hardcastle’s clear and poetic prose.
In between writing which is by turns downright sexy, or full of trembling vulnerability and wit, there are powerful themes of police corruption, societal discrimination and grief as both narratives crash fully into the impact that AIDS had on the wider LGBTQIA+ community. Despite many deeply tragic moments, the story is underlined by a persisting joy which is returned to over and over.
Each character within A Language of Limbs tangles and untangles, almost intersecting often throughout the book as they get closer to themselves. Hardcastle builds the tension of this connection so perfectly that such moments are impossible to miss. Whether in the experiences of the world around them, or in one degree of physical separation, their worlds repeatedly almost – almost – collide. I loved this novel and deeply enjoyed being broken open by it.
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