The death of firebrand poet Dorothy Porter in December 2008 was publicly mourned and reported on the front pages of Australian newspapers. She was hailed as a 'literary Madonna' and the saviour of Australian poetry. In this thoughtful, attentive study dealing directly with the cinematic version and the poetic text of Dorothy Porter's verse narrative 'The Monkey's Mask', Rebecca Louise raises some interesting questions about voice, gender, identity and adaptation. It is also a welcome contribution to scholarship that engages with the work of Dorothy Porter, an intelligent, vivid and sensuous writer with expansive interests, whose death from cancer at the age of fifty-four, was a significant loss to literature and creative endeavour. The book provides a broad scope of analysis, covering the 1994 verse novel 'The Monkey's Mask' and its author, Dorothy Porter, as well as the controversial 2000 Samantha Lang film of the same name.