- Genre: Literary Fiction, LBGTQ+
- Published by: Dutton
- Publish date: June 03, 2025
- Number of pages: 304 pages
- Author’s website: https://www.dylinhardcastle.com/
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A breathtaking, sliding-doors, will-they-won’t-they love story and a tender epic that explores the weight of a choice, the love of community and how joy is found in even the darkest corners.
Newcastle, Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: To give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unknown or stay the course? In alternating chapters, we trace the two versions of a life that follow.
In one, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and is kicked out from her home. She lands at a queer communal home in Sydney called Uranian House, where she meets the people who will forever become her family. Meanwhile, in the second, a teenage girl pushes down her lustful dreams of her best friend and eventually makes her way to a university in Sydney to study English literature.
During pivotal moments, the physical space between these two women closes—like when they each meet the first great loves of their lives in 1977 at a protest, or when, almost a decade later, they are both rushed to the hospital with only a curtain between them. Through the AIDS crisis—and from classrooms to art galleries, beds to bars and hospitals to homes—we witness these two lives shadow each other until, finally and poignantly, they collide.
Rating: 4/5
A story of two lives, limb one and limb two, over the course of three decades. Told in the style of poetic prose (and no quotation marks for dialogue), we follow these two limbs who experience entanglements and desires that go against social norms in Australia. This book is a reminder that the queer community fought tirelessly for acceptance and the right to exist openly and proudly. This is an homage to found families and honors the ones we lost during the AIDS pandemic. It’s a very beautiful book that was difficult to read at times for both the content and how it’s written, but definitely one that will stick with me.
Have you read this book? What are your thoughts? I’d love to know!
I received an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this book from Netgalley and Dutton. This has not impacted my rating and this review is voluntary.
Musings by Michelle 