Arms & Legs: A Novel

by Chloe Lane

Overview

A taut and suspenseful domestic drama that explodes the comforting and constricting confines of marriage and early parenthood.

In a Florida almost claustrophobic with life, Georgie’s marriage has stagnated. But there’s no room to attend to it, as dangers small and large crowd in: teeth break, her son can’t find his words, there’s something in her husband’s eye, termites swarm the neighbourhood, and she finds a dead boy in the burning woods.

And then—there’s Jason.

As the repercussions of her discovery of the body, and her affair, come to land, Georgie digs deep, examining the undercurrents of her actions with curiosity, humour, and cutting emotional intelligence. Arms & Legs is a deliriously insightful excavation of love, desire, parenthood, and relationships at their best, and worst.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487012038
Publisher:	House of Anansi Press
Publication date:	04/09/2024
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

CHLOE LANE earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Florida. She is also a graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington and the founding editor of Hue+Cry Press. Her first novel was The Swimmers. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

What People are Saying About This

Kirsten McDougall

Zigzags between comedy and despair … This perceptive, nuanced novel charts the murky, contingent boundaries we draw around our homes and hearts.

Fiona Kidman

This intense examination of a marriage with its rifts and sorrows had me spellbound.

Claire Fuller

Chloe Lane is expert at taking us deep inside the body, heart, and mind of her character Georgie, showing us her most intimate desires with exquisitely agonizing clarity.

From the Publisher

"Chloe Lane is expert at taking us deep inside the body, heart, and mind of her character Georgie, showing us her most intimate desires with exquisitely agonizing clarity." — Claire Fuller, author of The Memory of Animals

"Arms & Legs is a meditation on a woman — Georgie — torn between competing ideas of herself: who are you now and who do you want to be? And who are you supposed to be? This beautifully crafted novel lights the story on fire, letting it cleanse as it burns, revealing in its wake things that cannot be erased. As the fire on the ground burns, the fire and passion in Georgie’s marriage threatens to burn out, until it finds a new source of oxygen. The smoke, humidity, and strangeness of Florida are palpable, mirroring a domestic world that threatens to smother." — Gillian Best, author of The Last Wave

"This intense examination of a marriage with its rifts and sorrows had me spellbound." — Fiona Kidman, author of This Mortal Boy

"Zigzags between comedy and despair … This perceptive, nuanced novel charts the murky, contingent boundaries we draw around our homes and hearts." — Kirsten McDougall, author of She's a Killer

"An astute, fine-grained novel about the fires we light to sustain ourselves—and what happens when they get out of control." — Emily Perkins, author of The Forrests

"Arms & Legs is a gritty, sexy novel that will have you aching for its characters, for the things they can and cannot say to each other." — Sue Orr, author of Loop Tracks

Gillian Best

Arms & Legs is a meditation on a woman — Georgie — torn between competing ideas of herself: who are you now and who do you want to be? And who are you supposed to be? This beautifully crafted novel lights the story on fire, letting it cleanse as it burns, revealing in its wake things that cannot be erased. As the fire on the ground burns, the fire and passion in Georgie’s marriage threatens to burn out, until it finds a new source of oxygen. The smoke, humidity, and strangeness of Florida are palpable, mirroring a domestic world that threatens to smother.

Emily Perkins

An astute, fine-grained novel about the fires we light to sustain ourselves—and what happens when they get out of control.

Sue Orr

Arms & Legs is a gritty, sexy novel that will have you aching for its characters, for the things they can and cannot say to each other.