"The prose is textured, viscous almost, an ooze of sweet honey shot through with golden light . . . --Yves Rees, 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 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.

Autorentext
Dylin Hardcastle (they/them) is an award-winning author, artist, and screenwriter. They are the author of Below Deck (2020), Breathing Under Water (2016), and Running Like China (2015). Their work has been published to critical acclaim in eleven territories and translated into eight languages. A Language of Limbs won the Kathleen Mitchell Award through Creative Australia. The novel has been optioned by Curio (Sony Pictures) and is in development.

Klappentext

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction
One of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2025

“[A] gay, literary Sliding Doors.”
—Autostraddle

“Heartbreaking and not to be forgotten.”*
—USA Today***, “Best Books of the Year”**

A breathtaking, will-they-won’t-they love story and 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, we trace the two versions of a life that follow.
 
In one, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and is kicked out from her home. 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 the second, 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 these two women closes—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 and poignantly, they collide.

Leseprobe
limb one

All my life, undoes.

With my t-shirt - discarded on the floor. With my flesh - pricked pink and glistening in the hot glow of the lamp. With my breath -
dense as a downpour. With my hips - pressed hard against the workbench. With my spine - arced and shivering. With my throat - open. With her hand - inside me. With our mouths - ravenous. With the door behind us - opening to the impervious wall of night. All my life, undoes.

Because my mother, standing in the doorway of the garden shed, screams. Or at least, that's how I'll remember it. A scream that pierces and pulls apart. Her words all blurring together, because I am already underwater.

I feel the blood draining from my hands and feet, running back into my core to protect my heart. I feel weightless, yet impossibly here, because there's no escaping. There's only undoing.

She has put her clothes back on.

Get dressed, she says, here, put this on! She thrusts my t-shirt in my lap. I clutch the shirt, for a breath, and feel this moment stretch out sideways, as I look through my own tears into her eyes, this girl I love, shaking my head, crying inside, no, no, no! As she manages a smile and squeezes my shoulders and my limbs quake like they already know what I'm about to lose. Because she leaves, pushing past my mother, out into the darkness. Running off down the street. I will never see her again. She is gone.

My father has heard the scream, and by the time he finds my mother, I am a shuddering, shaking. Trembled mess. My mother is in the doorway, pointing at me. What is it? he asks, hands open and reaching for me. Are you okay? And for a moment,
I think I am saved. Forgiven. A moment - passes.

She was, my mother starts, struggling for words, with her.
I scramble to my feet. Dad, wait, please. His eyes dart between my mother and me. I'm in my cotton shirt and pyjama pants. He looks down at my bare feet. The garden shed smells of wood shavings and compost and flesh. What the hell is going on? he asks, face fattening with frustration. Your daughter . . . says my mother, looking away from me, her face contorted by repulsion, like she can no longer fathom that I am of her. She was touching that girl! Touching? Oh, come on! My mother shrieks, erupts with tears. For God's sake! She was kissing that slut!

That single word is an axe. Heart hacked into bloody chunks. Because this summer rolled through me like black thunder, hot and heaving. And she witnessed me in strikes of lightning. Flashes of truth and ecstasy. With her, my naked body shifted from an object of desire to the subject of the story. She saw me in all my horror, my blood sparkling red, staining her fingers the first time she reached inside me. And I liked how it felt, being turned inside out, learning that the self becomes whole in the moment it is opened.

I watch now, my hands on my mother's chest, shoving her body, as if they are someone else's hands. My mother's head hits the shed wall so hard I think she might break through it. Her lips round into an O as a rush of air leaves her throat. Winded, she gasps. I watch her floundering in a pool of shock and disgust. My father's hands are around my neck before I think to run. He drags me through the door, out onto the back lawn. And in
the soft glow of the porch light, I see my father's face, the colour of a salmon belly sliced open. Fleshy and wild. I try to speak, but his grip holds all the words. He raises his fist. Hesitates.

I think, I might die here.

The blow is swift. Cold on my face the way ice almost feels hot. I land flat on my back. The earth beneath me is spinning but spinning the other way. The wrong way.

I breathe in the sweetness of freshly cut grass. Inside muscle, the scent becomes the stench I will forever associate with the last time I see my father. Because as he kneels for another strike,
I roll and scramble to my feet. He grabs my ankle, yanks me back. I kick him in the face, feel his nose crunch beneath my heel. He lets go and I am free. Up and running. Through the side gate. Down the driveway. Barefoot on concrete. I run and run and run until my feet are bleeding and I'm collapsing into the beginning of what will be my after. Because I know already that I'll never again s…