A Language of Limbs, Dylin Hardcastle
Two stories run parallel to one another – one of exile and shame, the other of suppressed desire. Both stories bloom with the love of found family and joy, but suffer in the wake of hatred, violence, and the grief of unfulfilled potential. As these women wrestle and embrace their sexuality as their lives orbit each other from 1972, through Australia’s first Mardi Gras and the AIDS epidemic, to the 90s– leaving us to wonder whether these two souls might ever one day meet.
There’s good reason A Language of Limbs has been so heavily championed by Australian readers and let me be another reviewer to fuel the hype because Dylin Hardcastle has penned something so painfully tender, overwhelmingly sad and brutal, yet so completely beautiful.
Sometimes a book can be gorgeously written, and that’s enough. Or the characters and plot are so compelling that the writing itself can be forgiven for being lacklustre. But Hardcastle is a double threat; they fill this book with so much life, the hearts of ‘limb one’ and ‘limb two’. Both narrators are equally as captivating and the poetry in their shared rhythm, their crossovers, their hopes and dreams and broken moments and breathtaking. Enriched, further still, by the people that love and accept them, the book’s ensemble of characters is vivid and alive in their own right.
A Language of Limbs is just absurdly good. I know that sounds silly, but it took me by surprise just how wonderful and heart wrenching and moving this book is. Read it, read it, read it!
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