Book description
Lively, pertinent and honest about the realities of growing older, this
thoroughly engaging novel is impossible to put down. Fifty-nine and
widowed, with not much money coming in and not many friends, Clarice
decides to buy a flat with Una, an acquaintance from her school days.
The perfect solution? Not exactly. Una comes complete with
sixteen-year-old Sheree, who is very loud, very pregnant. And why
exactly is she there anyway? For solace, Clarice turns to another
acquaintance, Beryl, who in turn confides in her imaginary friend, Greg,
borrowed from a seventies TV drama. These wacky but entirely believable
women bounce off each other uncomfortably: Clarice catches up with the
truth about Una's past; Una deals with her oddball boyfriend in
unexpectedly dramatic fashion; Beryl argues with Greg; and young Sheree
spins closer to the birth of her baby. Marilyn Duckworth was born in
Auckland and spent her childhood in England, but has since lived mainly
in Wellington. Her first novel, A Gap in the Spectrum, was published
when she was twenty-three; her fifth, Disorderly Conduct (1984), won the
New Zealand Book Award and was short-listed for the Wattie Book Awards.
She has held the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship in Menton, a Fulbright
Fellowship in the USA and also writing fellowships at Victoria and
Auckland universities. In 1996 Leather Wings was short-listed for the
Commonwealth Writers' Prize. She holds an OBE for Services to
Literature. As well as publishing fifteen novels to date and various
short stories, she has edited a book on writing sisters in New Zealand
and an autobiography, Camping on the Faultline.
