'I loved it' Hannah Kent

'An instant queer classic' Benjamin Law

The first love of a teenage girl is a powerful thing, particularly when the object of that desire is her best friend, also a girl. It's the kind of power that could implode a family, a friendship, a life. On a quiet summer night in Newcastle, 1972, a choice must be made: to act upon these desires, or suppress them? To live an openly queer life, or to try desperately not to?

Over the following three decades, two lives almost intersect in pivotal moments, the distance between them at times drawing so thin they nearly collide. Against the backdrop of an era including Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, we see these two lives ebb and flow, with joy and grief and loss and desire, until at last they come together in the most beautiful and surprising of ways.

A Language of Limbs is about love and how it's policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak. An unashamed 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.

'Poetic, fresh and mesmerising . . . I am desperate for more stories like this' Jessie Stephens


Praise for A Language of Limbs

'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. Upon finishing this book I was overwhelmed by a sense of, more. I am desperate for more stories like this.' Jessie Stephens