In Marilyn Duckworth New Zealand has its finest writer of the absurd. In fourteen novels, a novella,
Fooling(1994), a poetry collection,
Other Lover’s Children(1975), and a short story collection,
Explosions on the Sun(1989), she captures the flavour of life’s strangeness, its unexpected turns and unpredictable outcomes. Her autobiography,
Camping on the Faultline(2000), shows how the bizarre celebrated in her fiction is often grounded in her own experiences. The liminal territory that Duckworth charts between the ordinary and the odd in novels written over the last fifty years constitutes a fictional response to her own humdrum, domestic existence, her four marriages and four children. From her home in Wellington she has travelled widely in her imagination as well as in fact,…
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Citation: Wilson, Janet. "Marilyn Duckworth". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 May 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1332, accessed 21 November 2024.]
