Abstract

This collection explores, in the words of Australian writer Beverley Farmer, "the experience of being foreign". And whilst the majority of stories are rooted in some kind of travel experience, each sees its characters negotiating times of isolation or dislocation in their lives for which 'the voyage'--physical, emotional or psychological--is often a catalyst for entering into yet another 'new' space. In the title story, "New feet", Mrs Butler seeks a self-imposed isolation from her native cultural milieu, literally erasing her own footprints in her attempt to construct a new life for herself; whilst in "Kill the old red rooster when she comes," two `intrepid women travellers' in India complacently repeat the mistakes of their forebears until a natural event disorients them completely. For others, displacement, at least initially, occurs closer to home. The first-person narrator of "Dectomy" negotiates her way through a brief, disastrous, international marriage; and the children, Christopher ("Bubble-and-Squeak"), Mazie ("What any dog wants to hear") and Eddie ("What the sea wants") experience moments of foreignness that are disturbingly alienating. As an overall concept, New Feet attempts to investigate characters who step into being strange and who rarely, within the scope of each story, 'return'. In this sense, being foreign is not foreign in itself, but something which, like the skin of one's feet, the characters across the collection must continually grow into and out of.