Joy, Joy, Why Do I Sing? — Darlene Madott

In this brilliant collection of short stories, Darlene Madott explores the individual quests of characters to sing themselves out of the void--to seek a motivation beyond the confines of their personal joys and sufferings. In the title story, the uniqueness is in the exploration of the notion that in the gift of singing, we pray twice: we celebrate the song, and we celebrate the creator. Madott's stories examine the relationships between people, within the understanding that one note in isolation means nothing; it communicates nothing. It is the interval--the relationship between two notes and how an individual moves from one to the other--that creates meaning. Sometimes there is consonance, but more often, it is dissonance that swirls between two people. The author describes this dissonance in one marriage as "the interval of a seventh apart." All of the stories possess a certain tugging at the heart, and at the core of each story it is love alone that transposes the music.