Arms & Legs

Chloe Lane is a writer and the founding editor of Hue+Cry Press. She was the 2022 recipient of the Todd New Writer’s Bursary and a 2021 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow. Her debut novel The Swimmers was longlisted for the Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2021 Ockham NZ Book Awards. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, with her husband and young son.

'Gripping in its exploration of trauma, desire and the knotty, day-by-day business of staying together' Daily Mail'Lane is expert at taking us deep inside the body, heart and mind of Georgie, showing us her most intimate desires with exquisitely agonising clarity' Claire Fuller, author of The Memory of Animals‘Arms & Legs zig zags between comedy and despair as Georgie seeks to understand her life, her son, the wilderness outside and inside of her. 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 Lioness‘This intense examination of a marriage with its rifts and sorrows had me spellbound. The images of fire give it an extraordinary brilliance, a moving subtle light casting brightness, shadows and a constant rising tension’ Fiona Kidman, author of This Mortal Boy 'This beautifully crafted novel lights the story on fire’ Gillian Best, author of The Last Wave ‘A gritty, sexy novel that will have you aching for its characters, for the things they can and cannot say to each other. Lane’s taut control of the narrative echoes the story’s fecund, humid Florida landscape . . . and her ability to sustain suspense lasts well beyond the final page’ Sue Orr, author of Loop Tracks ‘Gives you the feeling of having witnessed something authentic, something palpable . . . There is an emotional resonance, an emotional truth, to Lane’s words’ Academy of NZ LiteraturePraise for The Swimmers‘Tackles the subject of assisted dying with wit and pathos’ The Independent‘Lane’s unsentimental prose nails the strange enormity and mundanity of love and death with perfect piquancy’ Daily Mail‘A powerful and intense debut’ The Sun‘Exquisitely observed, harrowing yet surprisingly funny’ SAGA Magazine‘Poignant and subtle with humorous elements as this disjointed family struggles to fulfil the final wishes of their loved one’ Candis Magazine‘Darkly funny, desperately sad, brilliantly written. I absolutely loved it’ Claire Fuller, author of The Memory of Animals‘Spectacular. A perfect blend of devastating humour and sadness’ Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead  ‘A beautiful, heart rending and totally absorbing narrative, a compulsive page turner from start to end . . . A little masterpiece’ Fiona Kidman, author of This Mortal Boy‘A tender portrait of indestructible family bonds and unrepentant, rule-breaking independence’ Bookanista‘An observational tragicomedy, [The Swimmers] traces the small panics, collaborative denial, and suburban antics that a family perfects in their attempts to keep their heads above dangerous emotional waters’ Foreword Reviews‘Nuanced and beautifully drawn, complicated women in all their glory’ Alice Jones, The Debut Digest‘An intense, moving and darkly comic story about unrepentant, difficult women’ New Zealand Herald