Our Love Could Light the World

By Anne Leigh Parrish

You know the Dugans. They’re that scrappy family that lives down the street. Their yard is overgrown, they don’t pick up after their dog, their five children run free—leaving chaos in their wake—and the father hasn’t earned a cent in years. The wife holds them together on her income alone. You wouldn’t want them for neighbors—but from a distance, they’re quite entertaining.

You can tell from the empty bottles lying under the bush out front that alcohol is an issue in the household—and all things considered, you can hardly blame the wife for leaving one day.

Without her at the helm, the rest carry on the best they can. Their strong sense of family keeps them going. They help—and in some cases, rescue—each other as they struggle for a better life. And while they never follow the rules, or completely conquer the adversity with which they’re faced, they do manage to meet their challenges—and even earn some much-needed respect. Along the way, they might even make you proud.

Set in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, the twelve linked stories of Our Love Could Light The World depict a dysfunctional family that’s messy and rude, cruel and kind, and loyal to the end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Release date: Mar 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781938314452

Reviews for Our Love Could Light the World

[alyssaross-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Our Love Could Light the World by Anne Leigh Parrish

The Dugans are a family of 7 trying to make ends meet once again in a new rental home. The yard doesn’t get mowed, the house is a mess, and the five children run free and horrify their neighbors. One day Lavinia decides she cannot live like that anymore and leaves her husband. All their lives change at that moment as the family has to shift in new ways.

The story was very slow and felt choppy and confusing. There were times that within a few sentences you had completely changed location without any reference to it at all. The story never really followed a sequence of events or time. The characters felt two dimensional and just like names on a piece of paper. I never felt any depth to any of them or any connection. I wanted more depth and feelings from them. I felt like they were all cold unfeeling people who just walked around looking for somebody to talk to or take care of them. Lavinia left her husband for Chip even though she never loved him; she just wanted his money. Potter apparently never not over Lavinia but other than a few vague references to the fact that he was still in love with her, you would never know. Random people would enter the book and then soon they would just fall off the face of the earth, never to be referenced again. I didn’t feel like there was any emotion to this story.

I felt as though this story was written by a kid for a high school project rather than an actual published book. The only reason I finished it was because I knew I would be writing a review and needed to have all the facts and story line before I did so, and I really hoped it would pick up at the end, it did not.

*I received a free copy of this book by StoryCartel in exchange for my honest review.

[bibliolisa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book of short stories about people who are living a hardscrabble life, trying, and not always succeeding at being parents, siblings, and friends.

[bookchickdi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When I received an email asking me if I was interested in reviewing a book of linked short stories about a family with five children set in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, I jumped at the opportunity. I grew up in the Finger Lakes region and I am one of five siblings. The description intrigued me.That is where most of the similarity ends, although many of these characters seemed like people we all have known. After introducing the five children- chunky teenage Angie, who "ruled her siblings with a steady stream of insults", Timothy, close knit twins Marta and Maggie, and Foster the youngest, a happy child born with a twisted leg, this wonderfully sums up their relationship:"All in all, the five children didn't particularly care for one another, and they didn't dislike each other, either. One thing they knew was that they stood as a pack against the rest of the world."Mrs. Dugan worked and Mr. Dugan didn't due to an injury. She worked long hours and came home only to have to do most of the housework that husband Potter wouldn't do because he wanted to spend the day drinking. When she gets the opportunity to attend a three-day work conference out-of-town, she jumps at it and it becomes a turning point for the family.The title story takes place as Lavinia is off at the conference. Angie has to take charge when Potter won't; she does the laundry, and sends her siblings to the store to get detergent and other necessities. They return with an elderly confused man, but without the needed items.It is here that we see Angie's compassion and kindness, something she seems to hide behind her gruff, green-haired, nose-ring wearing exterior. This trait comes into play in later stories as well, when she bonds with a child who has Down's Syndrome (and a mean grandmother), and in her choice of career.Angie was my favorite character, I liked the arc of her growth; it felt authentic. She occupies many of the stories, and I had a real empathy for her. I loved Parrish's honest portraits of this family that you feel could have been your neighbors.Lavinia is also in many of the stories, and I felt badly that she couldn't really be happy. Even when she got what she thought she wanted, it still didn't fulfill her. A character like her could be shrill and unsympathetic, but Parrish writes her so beautifully that we care about her, even if we can't relate.The men in this novel- Potter, and his sister Patty's boyfriend Murph- don't fare as well. They are willing to live off the labors of the women they live with, and don't seem to want to contribute or better themselves. While they could have been one-note, Parrish gives you a reason to root for them as they try to grow.The Dugan family are a group of flawed people, yet we care about them even as we want to throttle them. They have ties that bind them as shown in this passage."Angie knew that Potter couldn't stand Brett. She also knew that he'd never say so. They had always been like that, she thought. Aware of each other's truths without needing to say much."That really gets to the essence of this family, and probably many other families as well. They might not say it aloud, but they know each other's truths. Maybe that is the definition of a family.I found that this book and these characters wormed their way into my heart. This collection of linked stories deserves its place right up there with Elizabeth Stout's Olive Kitteridge.

[thelostentwife · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have always loved the idea of a set of connecting stories with an overlying theme essentially showcasing snapshots of the same area or family or event. Anne Leigh Parrish's collection of stories, Our Love Could Light the World, is one of those books. But, just like the other I've read in recent years (Olive Kitteredge, anyone?), this one fell a bit flat for me for reasons I will explain shortly.Read the rest of this review on The Lost Entwife on Feb. 13, 2014.

[pdebolt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I usually avoid short stories, but this book proved to be a treasure. The inter-connected stories of the Dugan family are a device reminiscent of the noteworthy Olive Kitteridge that works very well to give readers an opportunity to become familiar with this functionally dysfunctional family. The characters are fully known in vignettes that feature them both individually and as a whole.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Short stories are not usually my favorite. It seems just as the story gets started, it's finished. So I don't read many short stories without a very reliable endorsement. Linked short stories, though, are another creature entirely. I have a real attraction to interconnected short stories. When each story builds on previous stories and furthers the reader's understanding of the collection as a whole, it works for me. Anne Leigh Parrish's collection, Our Love Could Light the World, is one such story collection, centered as it is on the members of one hard luck family in the Finger Lakes region of New York. The Dugan family is the Bad News Bears of families. The odds are stacked against them in so many ways and yet over the course of the collection they will mature and show at least small signs of goodness. As the collection opens, mother Lavinia is preparing to leave for a business conference. She's in sales for a small company that sells manufactured homes. Husband Potter is out of work because of an injury and he's well on his way to depressed alcoholism. The five children run wild and are the source of some petty unpleasantness in the neighborhood. They come across as minor hooligans, cursing and treating the neighbors and their property with no respect. Teenaged Angie is the oldest Dugan child and is a cross between a goth and a punk. Then comes Timothy, twins Marta and Maggie, and finally Foster, the happiest and sweetest of the bunch. They are a messy, weary, broken and dysfunctional sort of family. The stories contained here address abuse, neglect, divorce, parent and child dynamics, frustration, and surprisingly enough, love. The characters are three dimensional and completely realistic, if not always terribly honest, likable, and appealing. And each story is narrated from the point of view of or centered around a different character so that the eventual picture drawn here is a complete and rounded one. Each new story also moves the Dugans forward in time so that ultimately the collection spans many years in the lives of this family showing clearly the ways in which they have changed and matured, or, conversely, didn't. Chronicling their setbacks and small kindnesses, the stories seem to show that there's not much joy to be had with this clan but eventually there does seem to be a quiet kind of contentment and acceptance of where they all are in life. Despite the lack of shiny happiness, this was a wonderful and touching read.

[leahmo-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’ve really been enjoying linked short stories lately, and Our Love Could Light the World is an enjoyable collection of stories centering on the Dugans, a scrappy down-at-the-heels family in the New York Finger Lakes region.The setting is what attracted me to this book when one of the lovely ladies at TLC Book Tours asked if I would like to review it. I live near the Finger Lakes and have many happy memories of summer vacations in rented cottages on one of the lakes, so I was thrilled to read a book set in this beautiful area. The location isn’t actually a major component of these stories, but I liked them nonetheless.In one of the first stories, Lavinia, the mother, leaves her sloppy, out-of-work husband Potter for a wealthy older man named Chip. The children follow her but have trouble adjusting to life with their new stepfather, who isn’t terribly interested in parenting. Each story progresses forward in time so that this book almost feels like a novel, except that instead of having a single plot arc, it follows a few characters as they grow and their relationships change.I enjoyed following the development of some of the characters — most notably, Angie, the oldest daughter. I loved reading about her growth from a troubled, confused teen to an assured, self-reliant woman. It was also nice to see how Potter gradually changes and improves himself in the years after his wife leaves him. Lavinia, however, is a rather sad character. Although she chooses to abandon an unhappy marriage for a man with money, her decision never seems to make her happy. She has an easy life, a nice house, and no money worries, but nothing about her new life fulfills her.We also meet the twins, Maggie and Marta, who take a dare too far; Anabelle, a classmate with Down Syndrome; Potter’s sister Patty and her partner, Murph, who live in Montana and take Angie in after an incident at home; and Timothy, the oldest son, who winds up with a broken heart after his college fraternity requires him to seduce a virgin.I thought Our Love Could Light the World was a compassionate look at the life of a broken family. The writing didn’t blow me away, but Parrish does an excellent job portraying the various family members as they fumble, learn, and either grow or stagnate.

[anesamiller · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Our Love Could Light the World follows one small-town family named the Dugans for over a decade through divorce, remarriage, young love, and house fires. Like Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, this new book by Anne Leigh Parrish is that rare species of fiction—a novel in stories. Each episode in the family saga is structured as a stand-alone story, while also fitting beautifully into a full-length narrative.
Such works are uncommon, no doubt, because they’re so hard to pull off, a bit like those three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. Full disclosure: I’ve never done such a puzzle and am convinced they’re impossible, although I realize they have their devotees. In short, I was bowled over by the sheer writerly skill on display in the construction of this extended tale of a couple who go their separate ways despite having borne 5 children together.
I was surprised that the title story came first in the book. Most authors would, I think, let the reader wonder a bit longer how the title would tie into the plot. Such an approach builds anticipation, but that’s too simplistic for Parrish. Her title story presents the good-sized cast of characters but offers few hints of where their lives will go from here. Rather, the Dugans struck me as the sort of people to stay in their ruts forever no matter how uncomfortable the mud might be. But it turns out that placing the title story up front informs the book in a more meaningful way.
An elderly man who has strayed from a local nursing home tells the Dugan children, among other random remarks, “Our love could light the world.” It’s a pronouncement that might be profound but goes largely ignored as the man is transported back to his care facility. Still, his words take on a broad significance as we read on to see the Dugans neglect one another and refuse to express their tender feelings amid the trials of everyday exasperation. Truly, the love of these brothers and sisters, husband and wife, could light their lives if it were not persistently shoveled under the bushel of fear and delusion.
This description may sound dire, but the book’s tone is light and engaging. Yes, the characters disappoint one another. They disappoint themselves and fail at many things, but their situation is not portrayed as tragic. They carry on. The language is often humorous. Such descriptions as, “She was built like a soup can,” or “He listed to one side, like a dinghy taking on water,” leaven our pity for the Dugans into something more like respect for the human condition.
All of this makes for an excellent read, both diverting and thought-provoking. One comes away with the sense that our love really could light the whole world, if only a few of us would stop covering our eyes.