AustLit

'In her memoir For a Girl, Mary-Rose MacColl quotes the American poet Louise Bogan. “No woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her art, a portion of its lost heart.” It’s apt, because throughout her harrowing story, MacColl is conscious of the “why’” of this book. Why is she telling complete strangers these most intimate and awful things? “I am by nature a private person,” she says, and later, “I am struggling here for I want most of all to be truthful.” She is hesitant to write about some things, she admits. “How can I hope to make someone else understand?”' (Introduction)