Any Day Now

Linda M. Bayley is a freelance writer based in Sudbury, Ontario. She is
the author of Estrangement: Poems.

Denise Roig’s second collection of short stories is an experiment
built on an experiment. In the 1920s, American dancer Martha Graham
played with bringing the sonata form to modern dance: exposition,
development, recapitulation. In this form Roig sees beginning, middle,
and end, and so organizes her stories in trios, each story whole in
itself but informing an overarching theme.

It is no exaggeration to say that the result is stunning. So many times
I was caught at the end of a story unable to breathe, wondering at the
connections made in the brain simply by the arrangement of the stories,
the right tones being played at the right times. I marvelled at the
characters’ humanity, the compassion and love that Roig used in
telling their stories, and the details that brought them to life.

To read this book is to have your heart broken and healed, broken and
healed, until its fissured surface resembles a careful mapping of the
travels of a dozen lifetimes. Look closely, and you will see there the
tracks of a woman crossing from Quebec to Russia to adopt a child; a
colony of French Canadians making their way in Massachusetts;
backpackers and buskers in a campground outside Florence. I saw myself
on that map, more than once. The shock of recognition was like a donkey
kick to the sternum, leaving me laughing, crying, and gasping for air,
all at the same time.