Passion Fruit Tea

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

Passion Fruit Tea is a collection of short stories written in the kind
of plain-spoken and honest language one would encounter in the fishing
villages of Nova Scotia or the mines of northern Canada. The author has
the uncanny ability to write about people as if their lives were
unfolding before your eyes. Her style appears simple but is actually far
from it. Under the rubric of “ordinary people,” she reveals the
essences of a broad range of unique Canadians going about their daily
lives.

The story “Skylight,” for example, tells in a gentle fashion the
tale of three lives metamorphosed by their contact with each other. This
metamorphosis is not dramatic but instead quietly unfolds. Barely
beneath the surface, abuse and prejudice exist, but the story does not
deal with these; rather, it focuses on change and on the kind of simple
redemption that can happen when people open their hearts and lives to
each other.

Deceptively simple, with a naive quality that draws the reader in,
these stories quickly reveal that small lives make small differences
that move out like ripples in a pond to encompass the world.