Faces in the Fire, and Other Fancies

From his home in Tasmania, Frank Boreham recalls an unsettling arrival in New Zealand and the friendships that followed. His introduction presents these essays as a way of renewing ties with people remembered across the years. The opening piece finds its subject in a baby playing with paper, hearing a telephone and pulling at a chair. These small discoveries lead Boreham to consider surprise as a necessary part of mental life and to reflect on how adults lose their sense of wonder.

The collection combines personal recollection with arguments about faith, imagination and growing older. In the middle excerpt, broken childhood illusions become a way of thinking about disappointment and the possibility of finding richer beliefs. Boreham develops his ideas through familiar objects, remembered incidents and comparisons drawn from nature. Readers interested in reflective religious writing can follow how an ordinary experience becomes the starting point for a broader argument.