It is my trade," he said. "I work for the bean family, and every day there are deaths among the beans, mostly from thirst. They shrivel and die, they go blind in their one black eye, and I put them in one of these tiny coffins. Beans, you know, are beautifully shaped, like a new church, like modern architecture, like a planned city

New York: Braziller. 1984. "This Desirable Property" in New Zealand Listener 3 July 1964
1965.

These dramatic personal experiences feature prominently in Frame's autobiographical trilogy and director Jane Campion's popular film adaptation of the texts with recognisably autobiographical elements further resurfacing in many of her fictional publications. Janet Paterson Frame ONZ CBE (28 August 1924 – 29 January 2004) was a New Zealand author. Frame's celebrity is informed by her dramatic personal history as well as her literary career.