[1][5] She moved to England in 1975 and spent nearly twenty years working as an editor of a political magazine and raising her children.
[8] In the same year "Perfume" was published in Marshall's collection Authors' Choice: Leading New Zealand Writers Select Their Best Stories — And Explain Why.
[9] Reviewer Margaret Agnew noted that the main character's blindness "allows Metcalfe to create a strange and exotic world out of the everyday mundane".
[10] In 1997, Metcalfe began writing a biography of her Polynesian ancestor, Mauatua, who left Tahiti in 1791 aboard the Bounty.
[14] Reviewer Susan Jacobs for The New Zealand Herald observed that it was sad that Metcalfe did not live to see the book published, and described the novel as "vibrant, passionate yet ultimately unwieldy".