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You Do Not Have to Be Good

A Memoir

By: Dayna MacCulloch

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Paperback | 1 August 2023

At a Glance

Paperback
352 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
14.0 x 21.7 x 3.05

Paperback

RRP $27.49

$26.75

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When Dayna MacCulloch was two years old, her father killed his friend and then himself. Twenty years later, she went back to see where it happened—where her father morphed from the hippie, homesteading, jack-of-all-trades man that everyone loved to the guy who took his rifle off the shelf one night and shot his friend in the face. Standing in the place where he did it, a wildfire of unanswered questions—the ones she’d suppressed all her life—blazed open within her. The life she was living no longer made sense, no longer was enough. While most of her friends were applying for big jobs, getting married, and getting pregnant, she bought a one-way ticket to a Greek island—determined to, as Rilke advised, live the questions for as long as she could.

You Do Not Have to Be Good is the story of where that choice led her: to five different countries over the course of five years. It is a candid, intimate memoir about the ways that loss and landscape guide and shape us, the ways strangers can heal us, and what it means to finally come home.

Industry Reviews

"The poignant exploration of a life broken open by tragedy, MacCulloch takes readers on a vulnerable journey across cultures to find a defining sense of self. Written with visceral, breathtaking prose, You Do Not Have To Be Good carries us-body and soul—into the heart of MacCulloh's impassioned search for meaning, and, ultimately, love. A riveting account of loss, sex, conflict, and beauty that is impossible to put down."

—Laura Whitfield, author of Untethered: Faith, Failure, and Finding Solid Ground

“A dazzling, reverent memoir, You Do Not Have to Be Good is about living fully in one’s body and one’s history. MacCulloch renders in gorgeous prose her journey across Europe, as she strives to understand her father’s death and her own wild heart. Through grief and desire, she leads us ever closer to the sublime.”

—Megan Kruse, author of Call Me Home

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