Marilyn Rose Duckworth OBE (née Adcock; born 10 November 1935) is a New Zealand novelist, poet and short story writer.
[1] Academic Terry Sturm describes her female heroines as "earnestly engaged in a search for their own identities".
[1] It was followed by Married Alive (1985) set in a future New Zealand afflicted by an epidemic, and Rest for the Wicked (1986) involving a woman's volunteer work for a sleep research company and how that impacts on her family and relationships.
[1] Janet Wilson has said that Duckworth's best novels "have a New Zealand, specifically Wellington, suburban setting, and often foreground the personal saga against contemporary public events or themes".
[1] She cites in particular Pulling Faces (1987) and Messages from Harpo (1989); the latter involves three generations of women dealing with social and legal changes in 1980s New Zealand.
[1] In the 1990s her novels included Unlawful Entry (1992), Seeing Red (1993), Leather Wings (1995) and Studmuffin (1997); a number of these dealt with darker sexual themes such as incest.