Setting out for the summit

Airini Beautrais' original and far-reaching personal essays place her at the top of the field.

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Airini Beautrais is best known for her award-winning collection of short stories, Bug Week, in which her deadpan style delivers strangely intense and unexpected developments. In The Beautiful Afternoon, a book of personal essays, a similar method seems to be at play. Beautrais is conversational, discursive about her life and her research, yet there is nothing casual here. Deep, personal experiences are examined fearlessly, juxtaposed with forays into topics such as literature, the environment, religion, media, dance and gardens. Throughout, collisions of memory and thought reveal ideas that are nothing short of profound about life in our complicated world.