Astute, raw and deliciously dark, Arms & Legs is a compelling insight into a marriage that has stagnated.

New Zealand-born Georgie lives in a Florida swimming with wildlife, her suburb seemingly teetering on the edge of danger with the constant threat of fire, termite infestations, a racoon attack, broken teeth, something in her husband’s eye and a dead body in the woods. Then there’s her affair with Jason. It’s a lot.

The ceaseless struggle to control and make sense of this humid, claustrophobic landscape runs parallel to her relationship with husband Dan and anxiety surrounding her small son. Lane’s narrative is instantly compelling, as uncomfortable as it is intimate, making it impossible to look away as we witness a relationship floundering under the repercussions of an affair all while examining the best and worst of desire, resentment, parenthood and love.

Lane spent some time in Florida earning her MFA in Fiction. She knows the land; a fitting background to Georgie’s state of mind. While I admit to being one of those readers whose eyes automatically jump to any mention of New Zealand on the page (it’s like a mini celebration!) in this case I wasn’t distracted at all, instead totally immersed in the natural shift of place and language, convincing at every turn with Georgie’s wry observations packing a punch with humour and sharp perception.

‘Around us, all of our friends were rapidly blooming into the exact people I’d anticipated and that scared me. I’d wanted the murkiness and potential of a Florida swamp. There were no dead bodies in New Zealand though. Not a single person in New Zealand ever died. Here, the forests probably were overflowing with decomposing corpses…’ 

Her obsession over the young student who died and his intrusion into her dreams at night unsettle her as much as the controlled burn-offs she becomes involved with. She initially keeps this a secret as well, struggling with vulnerability (and lovability) inside a void of her own creation. Written from a first-person perspective makes Georgie an unreliable narrator but it’s impossible not to empathise with her capacity as a woman for enduring it all, to recognise the overwhelm in the midst of chaos.

A lot happens in this book, yet there is a lingering uncertainty right to the end. Georgie’s passivity at times helps generate the very dysfunction she’s engulfed by, flickering at the boundaries of safety, eroding the suburban life she thought she’d escaped.

When Georgie hears Dan murmuring to his stew, ‘Oh, hello,’ she remembers that he used to greet her in the same breathy tone during the early days of their relationship. Who, in a long-term partnership, hasn’t been struck by an unexpected memory that recalls an easier, more loved-up time? Either a rosy surprise or a cruel reminder of what was, what might be yearned for still. Dan, who proposed to Georgie after his mother’s funeral, presents as a pragmatic man yet there’s a sense of much simmering below the surface, as palpable as the pain in his eye. I like that Georgie comes to recognise she didn’t always know Dan (or Jason) as well as she’d assumed.

 ‘Everyone is unhappy,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Dan said, in a tone that suggested this wasn’t news to him.

 She sees him as the man who tethered her, same as ropes that are used to guide a boat’s sails and its movement. ‘No more flapping around.’

These beautiful insights are delivered with grace and truth. Lane immerses us in Georgie’s revelations; familiar, bittersweet and poignant. I’ve been thinking about it long after reading the last page.

Reviewed by Jane Lowe