A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle
Desire can be a powerful, all-consuming thing. When our desires do not fit societal norms we can find ourselves torn between embracing them, despite how ostracising this could be, or repressing them, confining them, and living a life of conformity. Dylin Hardcastle’s 2024 novel, A Language of Limbs, follows the parallel lives of two women who journey down these opposing paths – one is a queer life of exquisite joy alongside deep pain; the other is a life of conventional heteronormativity, haunted by dreams of the girl next door, and an inescapable what if?
The chapters alternate between these two women and the events that unfold from one fateful summer night in Newcastle, 1972. The first woman, “limb one”, is discovered by her mother in the garden shed, having sex with her best friend. She is dragged from the scene, attacked by her father, and sets off running. Fifteen years old, she knows this will be the last time she ever sees her family, or her lover: “I’ll never again be between the borders of that house, because my being is transgression.”
With a black eye, and only the clothes on her back, she is picked up by a truck driver named Dave, who is on his way back to Sydney after a funeral. Asked her name, limb one freezes, and parrots Dave’s own name back to him. In this powerfully understated moment, she stumbles upon her new identity, christening herself and beginning life anew as Little Dave. In a stroke of luck, or perhaps fate, Dave is a gay man himself, who sees that Little Dave is in need of help. He gently discovers her queerness, and when they reach Sydney he introduces her to his queer community. She is taken in by the family of Uranian House: a haven and a home headed by matriarchal trans woman Daphne.
Little Dave’s life unfolds parallel to that of “limb two”, who keeps her queerness confined to sensual dreams about her best friend. The unnamed narrator secures herself a high school boyfriend and severs ties with the best friend she’s in love with, before heading off to university in Sydney to study literature. She lives out an almost picture-perfect life of normalcy.
At times, these two storylines come tantalisingly close to touching. In one instance, both limbs attend a protest that erupts at the university after a gay professor is fired for his sexuality. Little Dave, one of the instigators of the protest, loudly celebrates her queerness and condemns the institution. Limb two finds herself at the same protest, but as a passive bystander: a student swept into the chaos, recoiling from the helping hand of a gay black man when she is knocked down in the crowd. These moments serve to show these two women as two sides of the same coin; Little Dave’s life could have so easily been limb two’s life, and vice versa. Starting out in the same place, their decisions lead them down completely different paths, until they find themselves on opposing sides of culture.
The stark contrast between their lives is echoed in the novel’s own structure; in the limb one chapters, the paragraphs are short and separated by line breaks, the prose is poetic and experimental, and it occasionally slips into the unconstrained form of poetry. Limb two’s chapters follow a much more standardised form, with indented paragraphs and more conventional language, mirroring her chosen lifestyle.
The novel unfolds over three decades, lingering on pivotal moments of LGBTQIA+ history.
Hardcastle captures the fear and violence of police brutality at the first Mardi Gras parade in 1978, which Little Dave witnesses while hiding under a car: “We hear the screams of skin ripped open. The certain cries that spit only from the throats of brutalised bodies. We are close enough to taste the grief on each other’s breath.” Later, the novel explores the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the relentless trauma of burying your friends and family, one after another after another.
Amongst the pain, however, what shines most about this book is the way it captures the glittering, abundant joy of the LGBTQIA+ community: “Because, against the impossibility of it all, joy persists.” Before the violence that occurs at Mardi Gras, there is brilliant light and power:
“On the train and in the streets, we are a spectacle. Our bodies are a photomontage of unlikely images, assembled so artfully we create a brilliant new picture, stuck together with glue and staples. We are united. Neither their pointed eyes nor pointed fingers can tear this picture apart, because we are bolstered by our rage and our love. Because when you humiliate and make small, the rest of us become bigger to fill the space, holding the family portrait intact.”
Little Dave’s chosen family, the inhabitants of Uranian House, care for each other with the tenderness and softness their biological families could not provide. Their home swells to accommodate those who need a place to stay, whether that be for a night or a year, and their hearts swell to fit them in, too.
“I look around the table of fifteen, at my friends shoulder to shoulder, the candle wax dripping and cigarette ash burning holes in the tablecloth. Red wine lips grinning, everyone singing. I think, look at us. Witness us. In a world that wishes for our annihilation, here are our bodies, spectacularly colliding.”
The life of limb two holds its own joy. She maintains a close relationship with her parents, thrives in academia and pursues a Masters, and falls in love with a writer named Thomas. However, those she loves do not escape the HIV/AIDS epidemic unharmed, and she is touched by devastating loss in her own way.
The ending of the novel is hopeful. Hardcastle does not hold up any one particular queer experience as the “right” way to be queer. Although limb two represses her queerness for three decades, her life still contains a jumble of joy and grief, love and heartache. A Language of Limbs promises that it is never too late to explore those hidden parts of ourselves, to cradle them with tender hands and hold them up to the light.
Macey Smart is a writer and editor from lutruwita/Tasmania. She recently graduated from the University of Tasmania with First Class Honours in English, with a research project on women and food in contemporary literature. You can find her work in Togatus, where she was the Deputy Editor for 2023, as well as swim meet lit mag and Playdough Magazine.