Gutsy Girls (Josie McSkimming, UQP)

When Dorothy Porter died in 2008, Australia lost one of its greatest contemporary poets. The author of nine poetry collections and five verse novels, Porter had a lusty, raw and confronting poetic style that won her critical acclaim, but it was only with the success of 1994’s The Monkey’s Mask that she was able to earn a living writing full-time. Seventeen years after her death comes Gutsy Girls, a warm-hearted and revealing memoir from Porter’s youngest sister, Josie McSkimming, a social worker, psychotherapist and university lecturer. While the book covers the girlhood of the Porter sisters, Dorothy, Mary and Josie, it also traverses Dorothy’s evolution as both a writer and a woman, offering the reader keen-eyed, emotional insights into her life’s trajectory, revealing details about her personal and professional lives in an insightful way without being exploitative. McSkimming’s awestruck love for Dorothy (or Dod, as both Mary and Josie called her) is ever-present as she guides the reader through her sister’s life – and the remarkable impact the loss of an older sister has on a much younger sibling underpins her every word. McSkimming also uses extracts from Porter’s poems as a guiding force throughout. This tender memoir will appeal to readers of Linda Gray Sexton’s Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton and Diane Keaton’s Brother and Sister: A Memoir.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Heidi Maier has a PhD in women's studies and literature. She has been an arts and literary writer and reviewer for more than 20 years. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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