Seven essays from the heart.

"When I was sixteen years old I had secrets, all right. But my secrets were not exactly my own; they were the secrets of others." So writes Nan Germaine in Perfectly Secret , Susan Musgrave's fourth collection of essays written by women writers about their teenage lives.

Nan remembers the loneliness of enduring her parent's secret confessions: her mother's unhappiness and her father's infidelity. For Anita Rau Badami, a mad aunt was her hidden shame. Meanwhile, a drunken father meant Lorna Crozier could never invite her friends home. And Cathy Stonehouse, who lived her life in fragments, found her secret self threatened in a not-so-innocent game of Truth or Dare.

Heartfelt, disarmingly honest, at times painful, these essays eloquently capture the reality of adolescent life. Perfectly Secret is a testament to the axiom that life isn't always as it appears.