A Nice Gazebo

Susan Manningham teaches sociology at Queen’s University in Kingston.

Robyn Sarah’s debut collection of short fiction examines and
illuminates quiet events in the lives of ordinary men and women. We must
remember that many great writers—Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen, to
name but two—wrote delicately and sensitively about what on the
surface may appear to be mundane existences. But on a consciously chosen
limited canvas it is often possible to delineate the most exquisite
detail and the most perceptive insight.

Sarah has published six distinguished collections of poetry, and it is
the lyrical quality of her work that is especially impressive. She
unquestionably has the poet’s unerring eye for detail; seemingly
everyday events are suffused with meaning and resonate with surprising
delights. In “The Pond, Phase One,” Sarah sketches a perfect summer
day filled with women and children. As the women’s talk brings the
realization that their ideas have been replaced by recipes, they join
the children in a muddy pond and effect a kind of catharsis. This simple
event is charged with feeling and energy, while on the surface appearing
as quiet as the summer afternoon on which it takes place. Sarah writes
with remarkable confidence and authority. Although the milieu of these
stories is everyday life, there is nothing bland or mundane about them.

Beneath the surface of these deceptively simple lives lies
dissatisfaction, frustration, and the pain of unrealized dreams. Not one
of these stories is exactly what it appears to be. With the most subtle
and delicate writing and a firm understanding of technique and
construction, Sarah presents us with a series of complex subplots,
revelling in the exploration of the unspoken feelings that lie just
below the psyche’s consciousness. It is the author’s ability to
imbue the ordinary with conscious and unconscious meaning, together with
her assured understanding of the poetic sensibility, that makes these
stories linger in our thoughts long after we have laid down the book.