Wrong Answers Only

Finally I've made it to the end of the 2025 CBCA Notables list! (With the exception of Sophie Beer's Thunderhead, which seems to have been lost by my local library -- however, they have still got my reservation, so perhaps they are intending to replace it at some stage??)

Wrong Answers Only by Tobias Madden is the story of Marco, over-achiever, happily gay, about to move to Melbourne from Ballarat to study Bio-medicine, when his life is derailed by a panic attack (not that Marco will admit that it's a panic attack). Nonna Sofia comes to the rescue, sending him to Europe to join his long-estranged uncle who is captain of a Mediterranean cruise ship, on which, by a happy coincidence, Marco's best friend Celine is also working as a dancer. It's CeCe's idea that Marco, who has always done  everything right, should start doing things wrong for a change.

If you're a fan of cruise ship life, clubbing, casual sex and drinking, arguments and misunderstandings, then Wrong Answers Only has a lot to offer. It moves along briskly and I appreciated the no-drama queer content, and the strong bond between Marco and CeCe, but by the end of the novel I wasn't altogether convinced that Marco had found the solution to his anxiety problems, or that the family rift with Uncle Renzo was on the way to healing. It's quite a crowded narrative and I'm not sure that all the ends really tied together. But still a lot of YA fun.
 

A Language of Limbs

I heard Dylin Hardcastle's recent novel, A Language of Limbs, recommended on the ABC Book Shelf program. It's a kind of sliding doors story. Two young girls, growing up in regional NSW in the 1970s, choose different life paths. In 'limb one,' she acts on her lesbian desires, is thrown out of home, makes her way to Sydney and finds a new community, under siege from the law and social opprobrium and soon to be ravaged by AIDS, but also joyful, loving and supportive. In 'limb two,' she suppresses her illicit feelings and follows a more conventional journey, through university and marriage, but still facing personal tragedy.

For quite a while I thought these two characters might be alternate universe versions of each other, their experiences eerily echoing or brushing up against each other; but they do come together at the very end. There was a bit more poetry than I'm really comfortable with (I'm a bit allergic to poetry), but this is a beautifully written and constructed novel that also provides an overview of queer history in the 20th century, quite a bit of which I remember living through. There's probably more sex in it than I'm really comfortable with, too, but each to their own! A Language of Limbs is a wonderful, deeply emotional, moving and passionate novel.