Wow, what a book to kick off Pride Month with!

This is such a beautiful read—so poetic, so lyrical. It’s sad and tragic while also being joyful and hopeful. I wanted to read it slowly to savor the language, but I also wanted to devour it, letting the short chapters form a sort of montage in my mind, picking up the pace the closer these two characters got to finding each other.

I loved how the main characters’ lives paralleled each other in so many ways while still remaining distinct. I enjoyed the repetition of certain phrases for both characters, which highlighted the similarities in their needs and desires. It was incredibly well done and made their naming as “limb one” and “limb two” throughout the majority of the story feel that much more fitting. I was so eager for their paths to cross that it was hard for me to put this book down once I started reading. I absolutely loved that we got their names at the very end—I hoped the author was saving that for the perfect moment, and they did. It made such an impact.

Beyond the stories of the two main characters, I also really loved the diverse array of side characters. You can truly feel the love the author has for these communities in how they handled these characters and their stories with such care.

I had tears in my eyes consistently for the last 100 pages or so. This is one of those books that left me feeling quiet and still once I finished.

I’m genuinely in awe of the writing and artistry that went into creating this story; it feels like so much more than a novel. I cannot recommend this enough—it’s an absolute must-read.

This is the first book in a long time that left me in tears by the final pages. A Language of Limbs is poetic and an amazing story about queer identity, grief, love, and the many shapes a community can take.

I loved the undercurrent of suspense—those near-misses and almost-encounters between little Dave and Suzanne kept me invested. I wasn’t sure if or how their paths would intersect again, and that anticipation made the story feel both intimate and expansive.

That said, the alternating POVs labeled only as “limbs one” and “limbs two” did get a little confusing. I often had to remind myself whose perspective I was in, and I found myself wishing the characters' names had been used more clearly to anchor me in their worlds. Still, that didn’t take away from the emotional impact or the lyrical beauty of the writing

This book wasn't for me. And honestly this is on me because I knew it wasn't my vibe!

I have zero appreciation for poetry and this book starts out with poetry and features poetry pretty prominently. I think a lot of people will enjoy the writing style, but it wasn't for me. I didn't really understand why quotations weren't used at all during the book. Again, I am sure this will not bother a lot of people, it just wasn't my cup of tea.

Also, I hate depressing books and oh my dear god was this book depressing. Literally you think "this cannot possibly get more depressing," and then someone else dies. Please read trigger warnings closely because something toward end of book caught me off guard and had me crying like a baby.

I think this book will appeal to a lot of people, it just was not my style!

A Language of Limbs is a tricky one to review—it’s a novel that I really loved in places, but really struggled with in others. Despite its flaws (or, more accurately, things that didn’t mesh with my personal tastes), the novel is a wonderful depiction of queer love, joy, and resilience with a very thoroughly researched representation of Australia’s queer history. I can easily see Hardcastle becoming a prominent voice in the contemporary queer & lesbian literary scene, and it will be well-deserved.

The novel is told in alternating perspectives—limbs one and two—with each following a (mostly) nameless woman as she grows into her sexuality and experiences the shifting dynamics of queer representation and politics in the last decades of the twentieth century. Hardcastle tackles several topics and ideas through these characters, and is mostly successful in doing so. Limbs one and two each have their own relationship to education as an institution, to religion, to unloving blood relatives and loving chosen families, to compulsive heterosexuality, and to queer culture and history. But where things stumble just a touch is Hardcastle’s integration of Aboriginal representation; comments that were made regarding Australia’s long and dark history of robbing Indigenous peoples of their land and their children stick out like a sore thumb—a necessary topic to cover, but one that reads like a checklist of political talking points rather than a carefully integrated element of the novel.

Hardcastle’s writing is generally very strong—descriptive where it needs to be, emotional without being overwritten, and propulsive. The interplay between limbs one and two allowed the novel to just fly by, and I found the book difficult to put down—just one more cycle through these characters’ lives, please! But Hardcastle wrote this novel as part of their PhD work, and it does show in a sort of Iowa-writer’s-workshop way, iykwim. I don’t know how to say this delicately, but the poetry woven throughout the novel was not good, and said poetry being good was somewhat integral to events in the novel. I also found certain sections of the book to play a little bit into the phenomenon of queer fiction being just so incredibly sad and traumatic. If something heartbreaking can happen to these characters, it does, often very explicitly. And while there are necessary reasons for some of this—the devastation of the AIDS crisis, for example—it just feels like a LOT crammed into 200 pages.

But I am overall very happy to have read this novel, as it put a promising author onto my radar and allowed me to learn so much about Australia’s own queer history and culture. An emotionally difficult novel at times, but one that is perfect for an introspective Sunday afternoon.

Thank you to the publisher for an e-ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Just found a new favorite book.

I am in awe of this raw, romantic, devastating, and disorienting read. I’ve really never read something written in this way. In this book we follow two limbs, or two POVs where one girl chooses to embrace her sexuality, starting with admitting her love to her childhood best friend, and one where the girl chooses to suppress those feelings. We watch as these two story lines oppose and intersect each other, weaving us through Australia and the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s.

This book is so raw and rips your heart right out of your body. In limb 1, we follow the girl who chose to come out, her found queer family, and her finding the love of her life. In limb 2, we follow the girl who chose to suppress her feelings, deciding to be with men, and how she is constantly haunted by what never was when trying to find contentment with her choice to stay closeted.

In both story lines we see girls devastated by love, by family resentments, trying to grow as individual people outside of their identities. But in opposition in both storylines, we see the difference in how they are treated by police, by the establishment, and how differently their communities are affected by AIDS.

The writing is poetic, gentle, and haunting. It’ll float around dreamily and then confront you head on with some of the rawest descriptions of grief and loss. I do not have enough words to describe my love of this book and I can’t wait to reread it.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the ARC!

6 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for the advance copy of this beautiful novel. My god, what a triumph this novel is. I could feel the truthfulness of it in my bones because I've been there. I'm 47 years old, and in some ways, on some days, I'm STILL there. It may be 2025, but being queer still isn't easy. There are plenty of days when I battle against the urge to deny who I am.

A Language of Limbs tells the story of 1972 Australia, two girls, both experiencing queer desire. One gives in, kisses her neighbor, and is promptly ejected from her house (at sixteen!) but her parents. The other is in love with her best friend, but takes the "easy" route - dates boys, goes to the spring formal, represses her authentic self. This is where I wished I'd had this available to me as a teenager so, perhaps, I could have seen that just because you're living life as expected doesn't mean it's easy. In fact, it's miserable. Sometimes authenticity takes time.

There's enough written about this novel to say, without spoiling anything, that the two girls are on a decades-long collision course through a couple of eventful decades in Australia. The journey is moving, heartbreaking, visceral.

My favorite part of this book was the division of chapters into "limb one" and "limb two" as though both stories are part of the same body, the same being. I think that's apt because we've all experienced what both of these girls experience.

My only complaint - and it gets better as the story goes on - but the narration was at bit detached. It took some time to get to know these characters, but I'm glad I made the effort.

This book should be an instant buy/read for everyone. The prose is superb while being intertwined with this beautiful, tragic recount of life in Australia starting in the 70s.

We follow 2 limbs in this story both divergent down different paths after a choice they make as a teenager whether to act on their feelings for their best friend, until they ultimately converge.

Both stories are captivating and intertwining, always leaving you with the feeling of how different a life can be when you choose different parts of yourself to embrace.

I’m excited to see what else Dylin will write because they had such a way with words and with setting the scene and emotions, it transported you into the story.

This is the kind of book that makes me love reading ARCs because it just takes you by surprise how great books can be. I can’t say enough good things about this book!

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC in exchange for a review.

This is why it's so important to write, publish, and read queer books. This book shares the joy, beauty, mess, devastation, and pain of moving through the world as a queer person. I'm baffled by the idea that I had not read about how the AIDS crisis affected countries outside of the US or Africa until I found this book. Books like this, written with so much raw emotion, serve to fuel us when we're faced with constant anti-LGBT laws and propaganda. I am so thankful for this book and I would recommend it to anyone who needs that fuel.

I loved this heartbreakingly beautiful story of love, chosen family, heartbreak, resistance, and hope. I didn’t love the poetry, but I did really appreciate the stylistic risks and choices the author made—some of them absolutely paid off.

This is my kind of literary fiction book I love: a queer story with very descriptive and intimate writing. We follow two women from when they are young in the 70s and one girl chooses to be out as queer and the other chooses to suppress it.

I felt this story to my soul and I loved the writing style - it almost felt like I was being told this story out loud and this was one of the first time that a book that didn’t have quotation marks made sense to me. I actually felt like it added a lot to my experience. This is your warning though that it didn’t have quotation marks because I know a lot of people do not like that. I could see this being an amazing audiobook though if you wanted to go that route. Some might say this was overwritten and had too lyrical of writing but I don’t think so.

The only complaint I have is in the beginning the two storylines didn’t feel extremely unique but once I figured it out that it was two separate people I didn’t have a hard time with it.

I highly recommend this! A solid 4.5 star read.

✨ A Language of Limbs follows two queer women—strangers to each other—living in Australia. In alternating chapters, we follow the lives of these women as they navigate romance, grief, loss, and the AIDS crisis. Spanning three decades, A Language of Limbs is both a coming of age story and a story of loss. ✨

Review:

A Language of Limbs felt both familiar and a stranger. On the former, A Language of Limbs includes several common tropes found in queer media set in the late 20th century: the case of being closeted, the widespread grief and anguish that arose during the AIDS crisis, and the found family trope associated with the queer community.

This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this novel because of this familiarity. However, it can be seen a bit overdone in the media space for some. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story. It was both touching and poignant as it touches on many important subjects. You can also just feel the love poured into the book by the author, and I think that is worth praising. I would love this story to be adapted.

However, I did have one minor problem with the book and that was the writing style. At certain points, I felt the prose was too flowery and tried to be something it didn’t need to be. Combined with the dual POVs, I wished the story was executed in a more conventional way to be palatable for general audiences given it touches on many important themes.

Read this if you are into:
💚 queer literary works
💚 queer romances
💚 poetry

Would I read it again? Yes

This was not a book I would have picked up on my own. Thank you to Dutton Books for the opportunity to read this book early :) This book follows two queer people and in the book they are labelled as "limb one" and "limb two" at first this bothered me because we don't get their names at all (which I'm guessing is the point) As I continued on with the story it reminded me of the show Pose and how in one perspective there was a safe house that queer people was able to go. I loved the writing in this story and how the chapters were fairly short so it was easy to breeze through. This book touches on the AIDS pandemic, queer love, found family, and lost love.

so take my opinion with a grain of salt here bc this has overwhelmingly positive reviews which made me so excited to get into this one! unfortunately i had to dnf about halfway through - i’m sure there’s a great story in here and i did enjoy learning about Australia during this time but i just did NOT vibe with this writing at all. the prose was more purple than barney the dinosaur and it just came across overwrought and pretentious in a way that had me rolling my eyes. this one worked for a lot of people apparently but i was not the guy for it!

Hello to my favorite book of the year so far!! I’d heard this book is absolutely gorgeous and emotional and devastating and yeah.. everyone was RIGHT!!

This novel follows two Aussie girls growing up in the 80s, told in alternating perspectives. They both understand their queerness in different ways, and we see how their paths diverge and come closer throughout the novel.

Hardcastle’s writing is so immediate, poetic, and evocative. I was locked in, experiencing everything alongside our main characters. The writing feels so visceral and anchored in the body in such a gorgeous way.

I also loved how art is woven into the story. Sometimes it can be a bit cringe when a character’s art is described in a novel, but I thought the creative process & poetry included in the novel were really well done. It added a special kind of energy to the story that I loved.

This is a beautiful story about love, family, grief, sacrifice, and having the strength to be yourself in a world that oftentimes doesn’t accept or respect you. Definitely check out the trigger warnings before diving into this one, but if/when you do, be prepared for the best book EVER!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for an ARC of A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle in exchange for my honest review.

A Language of Limbs is a truly beautiful and heartbreaking story about being queer and coming-of-age in 1970s and 1980s. Told in alternating POVs of limb 1 and limb 2, narrators who have withheld their names, we experience, through lyrical, captivating prose, how each individual’s choice regarding their sexuality during adolescence, plays out as they enter adulthood.

Although the setting for this novel is Australia in the 70s and 80s, the themes throughout this book are universal and timely, while also imbued with a sense of nostalgia. Our lead characters, along with a fascinating cast of side characters take us through a myriad of queer life challenges including loneliness, otherness, hate crimes, job discrimination, and the AIDS epidemic. But we also experience on a quite visceral level, the profound love and friendship shared in a world that has tried to deny and punish their existence.

I was completely engrossed in this story. The creative and unique structure, along with the lack of quotation marks, sometimes threw me off balance, but I was perfectly fine with that, because this is a story in which we are to feel like we are toppling over and then righting ourselves, alongside our characters. No matter what was happening in my day, the minute I opened my book into the life of either limb 1 or limb 2, I was immediately right there with them again. Hardcastle’s prose is absolutely exquisite, while still being accessible. I could not put this book down.

The ending was beautiful, although abrupt. I was left wanting more, but also felt content, and wishing for only good things for our main characters. A Language of Limbs is a book that will long stay with me. Although the themes and content may be difficult to read, and for some the prose may lean too poetic, I loved it! This is a story that needs to be widely read.

One of the most heartbreaking and breathtaking books I've ever read. I ached for these characters. Completely blew me away.

this was beautifully written though at times, to the point that it felt overdone. however, there is so much heart and emotion in this that it's almost as if the only way to have explained any of the characters or their stories, was that way. i was a bit confused until about half way through when i realized that the "then" and "now" pov's were separate pov's and not from the same person so that totally threw me off. felt a bit chaotic in that way but perhaps that was the point of it all. definitely read like a debut but again, such beautiful prose.

This was a beautiful coming of ag queer story set in the late 70s/80s in Australia.
The prose is very poetic and lyrical, and even though it felt a little overwritten in places, it still was achingly good and emotional overall.
The love conveyed was beautiful and powerful, and I enjoyed that "limb 2" found her strength at the end.
The format took me a minute to understand, but I was so engrossed at the end as the journeys of the two "limbs" found their way to each other.

Really gorgeous prose and interesting concept --- i am not sure if I fully understood the ending, but i think the parallels drawn throughout the book with claude and marcel are really cool.

limb one was unsurprisingly my favorite, and i felt like limb two's story hadn't really ended yet. while limb one had a clear place to move on from and some closure, limb two felt like she still didn't understand the full breadth of her self. i liked the swimming descriptions for her though!

the name symbolism was very cool and the hiding of the names ('little dave' being a nickname for limb one for most of the book) until the conclusion made for a fascinating reveal.

This book is absolutely breathtaking. It makes really effective use of a split pov structure, using it to highlight the different ways that queerness impacts someone’s life. The plot and pacing of this book are well-done and the characters are written very well. This book weaves poetry throughout the story and has some of the most beautiful prose I have read. This book is emotional and insightful and really packs a punch.