Swallowing Diamonds

Bundle, abandoned as a baby in a Wainuiomata house, has been passed from carer to carer until at twelve she is sent to a disturbed girls' home in Miramar, Wellington. By 2001 she has grown up and moved on, but not very far. On the police station steps she meets up with the childhood friend who taught her how to tattoo her flesh and swallow pins. He is her closest thing to family. What she now has difficulty swallowing are the normal aspects of life. The exercise leads her to trespass in a middle-class home where she has no right to be, and takes her to Europe on a stranger's money.In all Marilyn Duckworth has published 14 novels, a short story collection, a book of poems, an autobiography and edited a non-fiction collection. She has won the Literary Fund Award for Achievement and the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. In 1987 she was awarded an OBE for services to literature. She has held the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship in Menton, a Fulbright Visiting Writers Fellowship and several university fellowships.Duckworth, Marilyn is the author of 'Swallowing Diamonds' with ISBN 9781869415488 and ISBN 1869415485.