Arms & Legs by Chloe Lane

In her second novel, Chloe Lane takes the reader on a tour of the inner life of Georgie, a 30-
something university teacher and athlete in north central Florida. Georgie has a dutiful, if quiet,
husband in Dan and an oversized, slow-to-talk toddler son, Finn. One might call this a coming-
of-age story, despite the fact that Georgie is technically already an adult. Throughout the
narrative, she explores and tests what she really wants, what her experiences mean, and who
she wants to be with. If her marriage is not in any sense moving forward, is that OK? Does she
really want to continue with her lover? “I’d become convinced I’d been sleepwalking through
my life,” she thinks.

Lane’s ability to render this character and her most private thoughts and feelings in clear,
sometimes poetic prose, keeps us engaged, wanting to know what choices Georgie will make.
She is a full-rounded fictional being — alert, honest, and sensitive (her term is “porous”). Lane has
a gift for the right metaphor: “my boy Finn, that vessel of hopes and dreams and life yet to be
lived — god, some days it killed me to think of all the things he had yet to experience … Being a
parent was like living your life from a flying trapeze.” The author is also brilliant at portraying
the subtle tensions and let’s-not-talk-about-that moments when Georgie and her husband hang
out with friends.

Lane’s ability to render this character and her most private thoughts and feelings in clear, sometimes poetic prose, keeps us engaged … Gripping story.

Although she discovers a decaying corpse (which turns out to be Calvin, one of her students),
during her first stint helping with a controlled burn, this is not a murder mystery. Rather, his
accidental death is one more sign that Florida, and metaphorically, the world, are dangerous
places. Termites and frogs invade houses; a sick raccoon lurches across Georgie’s lawn; the
woods are dark and easy to lose one’s way in. Georgie is no stranger to fear, as a result,
enumerating how nature can kill her, and what defenses or antidotes she can use.

Her affair with Jason both entices and puzzles her. She’s unsure who he really is, and whether
their attraction means her marriage is finally terminal. Once she and Jason have broken up,
Georgie learns that her husband knew. In Dan fashion, he says little, but does state,
“You never even apologized, Georgie.” She replies, “I don’t know that I am sorry.” Lane’s
refusal to go for the happy, Hollywood ending — the reawakening of a troubled marriage —
keeps things real.

Near the end of this gripping story, Georgie volunteers for a second controlled burn, even
though her discovery of Calvin’s corpse still haunts her. All her life, she has pushed herself to
do things that scare her. During the burn, she finds herself in smoke that, like the dark woods of
the beginning of Dante’s Inferno, makes her lose her way briefly. “I can’t see a thing,” she says.
A few moments, later: “Now I can.” In the tradition of coming-of-age stories, Georgie reaches an epiphany: “What I wanted could change, I was allowed to want different things at different
times. I was also allowed to be unsure.“

Lane’s work is an example of how fiction can convey the depths of someone’s being in a way
that movies, by contrast, only clumsily attempt. I’m not saying her novel will never get
optioned, but this virtuoso performance shows her mastery of characterization, style and
understatement, her words seamlessly bridging setting and character.

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.

Publisher: House of Anansi Press (April 9, 2024)
Paperback 5.5″ x 8″ | 208 pages
ISBN: 9781487012038

John Oughton

John Oughton first lived in Guelph, Ont. After sojourns in Iraq, Egypt, and Japan, he now resides in Toronto's Beaches area. He studied literature at York University and completed two non-credit summer sessions at Naropa U.'s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Col., where he was a research assistant to Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman. He has published close to 500 articles, reviews, blogs, interviews, and six poetry collections, the most recent being The Universe and All That (Ekstasis Editions). He has also written a mystery novel, Death by Triangulation; and Higher Teaching: A Handbook for New Postsecondary Faculty. John retired as a Professor of Learning and Teaching from Centennial College. His current pursuits include guitar, photography, and kayaking.