Book overview
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction
One of TIME's 100 Must-Read Books of 2025
"[A] gay, literary Sliding Doors."
--Autostraddle
"Heartbreaking and not to be forgotten."
--USA Today, "Best Books of the Year"
A breathtaking, 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.
One of TIME's 100 Must-Read Books of 2025
"[A] gay, literary Sliding Doors."
--Autostraddle
"Heartbreaking and not to be forgotten."
--USA Today, "Best Books of the Year"
A breathtaking, 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.