Taking its title from a track from The Fiery Maze, the rock opera her sister Dorothy Porter and Tim Finn collaborated on, Josie McSkimming’s memorable memoir is a page turning revelation of a childhood under the shadow of father, Chester, and an early adulthood under the shadow of Jesus. And always, in the shade of her older sister Dorothy Porter, or Dod as she was affectionately known within the family circle.
But McSkimming doesn’t bask in that shade, she forges a bona fide entity in their own right, and write, being a challenge and a support, non passive participant in a reciprocal relationship between the promiscuous poet and the pious proselyte.
In the opening chapter of the GUTSY GIRLS, McSkimming states that this book is “about Dod’s life and my life wound around each other, and how her life story altered the trajectory of mine…. This is the story of losing and then finding both of my sisters in the hiss and spray of my own voice”.
That hiss and spray cuts and thrusts through this illuminating memoir of an apostate from Christian fundamentalism religious oppression and obligations. Two sisters, so alike in affinity, for many years seemingly at opposite ends of the social and spiritual spectrum.
But sisterhood prevails. Sisterhood triumphs.
McSkimming’s own sparkling prose is littered with writing from other members of the family, not just Dorothy, although the poet’s work, unsurprisingly, is the most prominent. It forges a natural symbiosis in this work, finely illustrating how much their lives wound round each other.
And for those who require a little bit of Goss, there’s a glimpse of the crush Dorothy had on Kelly McGillis during filming of The Monkey Mask, Cate Blanchett having conniptions on the pronunciation of Cavafy on her recitation of On Passion, Dorothy’s own rendering of Ginsberg’s explosive, erotic poem, Please Master at the Balmain Town Hall, and the impish inclusion of the Winnifred Sanderson poem, Flying Through Glass, in the Best Australian Poems of 2006, published by Black Inc and edited by Dorothy.
GUTSY GIRLS is truth in advertising, living up to its title, a lively, unique melding of autobiography and biography. A compelling read.
GUTSY GIRLS by Josie McSkimming is published by University of Queensland Press.
