Any Day Now

A movement in the sonata form traditionally comprises thee sections -- exposition, development and recapitulation -- which explore two themes according to set key relationships. In the 1920s dancer/choreographer Martha Graham and her musical collaborator Louis Horst developed a modern dance structure based on the sonata form and the inevitable change that comes from confrontation. When she was a young dance student at Juilliard in New York, Denise Roig was inspired by the fearsome Martha Graham, and Roig's latest collection of short stories, Any Day Now, is grounded on the same sonata form Graham experimented with in modern dance. In these story trios, characters confront themselves, their partners, their choices and lives. The change, when it comes, can be moving, sudden, quiet and heartbreaking. Stories within the cycles are linked by people, locale or theme: a single woman yearning to adopt a child from Russia; Quebec-born immigrants lost in translation in Western Massachusetts; an American woman floundering on a kibbutz in northern Israel between wars; couples trying to save marriages against all odds; a famous American poet dying of AIDS in Venice. All are struggling, all hoping the way will be made clear. Any day now.