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The Innocent Eye

The complexity around notions of childhood innocence is something that has proved to be fertile ground for the imagination of many writers. In her powerful novel extract Jane Feaver reflects upon the naivety of Bobby and her siblings in The Railway Children, comparing them to the more complex childhood experiences of Ruth and her siblings. Carrie Etter's poem 'Drought' is an intriguing meditation upon the capacity for control that children - sometimes unwittingly, sometimes not - can create, and how this affects and awes the adult onlookers.

 

Carrie Etter's poem 'Drought' is set in the set in the simple arena of a diner. The interactions, the power-play and the dynamics between waitress and customers, mother and daughter, the onlookers and those being observed, provide an absorbing and objective view of how we both view, and are viewed by others.

 

Jane Feaver's novel extract is also about complex interactions, but in this case features a family teetering on the brink of disaster as a powerful father dominates his wife and children. Both tender and threatening, Feaver's account of parents and siblings struggling to find their own place within the unit is an extremely tense piece of prose.

 

Carrie Etter

Originally from Normal, Illinois, Carrie Etter moved to England in 2001 where she teaches as an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her poems have appeared in The Forward Book of Poetry 2005, The Liberal, The New Republic, Poetry Review, The Times Literary Supplement and other journals and anthologies in the UK and the US.

Photograph: Matt Bryden

 

Jane Feaver

Jane Feaver was born in Durham in 1964. After reading English at university, she worked at the Pitt Rivers Museum and then, for over a decade, in the poetry department of Faber and Faber. Five years ago she moved to Devon with her daughter and now runs the charity Farms for City Children. The novel featured in New Writing 14 has been renamed as According to Ruth and will be published by Harvill Secker in March 2006.

Photograph: Jane Feaver

 

Illustration: Maurizio Marmorato
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Link to writing

'Drought' * 'Drought'

'The Art of Losing' * 'The Art of Losing'


Glossary for 'Drought' * Glossary for 'Drought'

Glossary for 'The Art of Losing' * Glossary for 'The Art of Losing'

Link to teachers notes

Teachers' notes The Innocent Eye * Teachers' notes The Innocent Eye

Link to readers notes

Readers' notes The Innocent Eye * Readers' notes The Innocent Eye

Link to author interviews

Interview with Jane Feaver * Interview with Jane Feaver

 

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