Shifts in tone, setting and narration create a sense of the uncanny in Beam of Light, Kinsella's haunting collection of stories.

A man is disturbed by the sight of a familiar dining table and chairs atop an impending bonfire of bulldozed trees, a girl finds a fox skeleton and feels compelled to protect its spirit by dispersing its bones over the valley, a couple are invited to dinner by Christians new to town an occasion that quickly turns heavy and strange, two men awkwardly meet again when their daughters attend the same ballet class, and a man and woman struggle to balance the threats of addiction and poverty with the joys and hopes of a new baby.

Stories range in location from Ireland to Germany to Greece to the Australian countryside threatened by catastrophic heat, land clearing, housing estates and strip malls and Kinsella's characters, so often on the edge, sear the consciousness.