A Language of Limbs: A sapphic love story celebrating queer life

A love story about the almost crossovers of our lives...

1972. On a quiet summer night in Newcastle, Australia, two teenage girls must each make a choice: to act upon their desires or suppress them? To live an openly queer life or to try desperately not to?

Over the following three decades, these girls grow into women and live out their decisions, always almost crossing paths at pivotal moments. In an era that spans Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, there is joy and grief and loss and desire for each of them – but will their lives ever collide?

A Language of Limbs is about love and how it's policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak. A 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. Perfect for readers who loved Chloe Michelle Howarth's Sunburn, Carol Rifka Brunt's Tell the Wolves I’m Home and Joseph Cassara's The House of Impossible Beauties, as well as fans of Pose, Call Me By Your Name and Angels in America.

'Hardcastle imbues the book with poetry, history and visual art, offering a love letter to the Australian queer community' - TIME (The 100 Must-Read Books of 2025)

'The queer Australian working-class novel you didn't know you needed - a heart-rending exploration of modern Australian gay history through the eyes of two women' - Soula Emmanuel, Irish Independent

'Immersive and vividly descriptive... instances of queer joy in the novel, and moments of hardship are written with such grace. I will be thinking about this book for a long time' - Chloe Michelle Howarth, author of Sunburn

'Wholly original... Heartbreaking and poignant, not to be forgotten' - USA Today

'A luminous exploration of desire, resistance and the architectures of connection' - Scene Magazine

'A life-affirming, deeply-felt novel of the decisions we make and the lives that unspool from them. To read A Language of Limbs is to be reminded of the power of queer joy and community. I loved it' - Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rights

'Hardcastle's novel carried me away like a tidal current. Expansive across time, yet intimate in its focus, A Language of Limbs is that rare book that's equally poetic and propulsive... Nothing short of an instant queer classic' - Benjamin Law, author of The Family Law

'An epic tale of sapphic pleasure, pain and activism in the face of police brutality' - Big Issue

'Formally inventive... It's like gay, literary Sliding Doors. And its told in gorgeous, often fragmentary prose' - Autostraddle

'Poetic, fresh and mesmerising, Hardcastle's work is like nothing I have ever read. A Language of Limbs is full of feeling; a love story about the family we make ourselves... I am desperate for more stories like this' - Jessie Stephens, author of Something Bad is Going to Happen

This novel contains depictions of family violence, overt transphobia, homophobia, racism and physical violence. This novel portrays the AIDS pandemic. This novel also depicts a stillbirth.

© 2025 Verve Books (Rafbók): 9780857309082

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Rafbók: 13 mars 2025