A Language of Limbs (Dylin Hardcastle, Picador)

Dylin Hardcastle’s tender and steamy third novel, A Language of Limbs, follows two sapphic young women (Limb One and Limb Two) on different paths through the febrile 1970s and beyond in Sydney. Poetic resonances between the two women’s lives are rendered to satisfying effect in this story of aching almosts, deep grief and exuberant joy that will appeal to readers of Emily Danforth and Jeanette Winterson. Centring lesbian and bisexual experience (while deliberately inclusive of many experiences within the LGBTQIA+ community), Hardcastle triumphantly disregards the male gaze, showing how women, under each other’s gazes, can shift ‘from an object of desire to the subject of the story’. Considering this sapphic focus, I found the story of Limb Two’s love for her long-term boyfriend somewhat drawn out and lacking in narrative tension, but make no mistake, this is a spicy novel with lots of intense sex (real or imagined) between women. Hardcastle writes with all sensual faculties and earnestly depicts the full-on force of female desires. In amongst this sensuality, the hearty social conscience of this novel also brings to mind John Berger’s 1995 novel To the Wedding, also a vivid novel of joy and love haunted by loss amidst the unfolding AIDS crisis. Hardcastle’s sensitive handling of this same era in Sydney is well-researched to heartbreaking effect. (Indeed, this novel is the outcome of their PhD.) In their ‘story of ghosts’, Hardcastle honours the brightness and individuality of lives lost and the unspeakable impact of those losses on the surviving community.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Melissa Mantle is a bookseller with a master's degree in literature. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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