Love Chains: Stories

by Margaret Blair Young

Like the naked preacher in Margaret Blair Young's Zoo Sounds whose placard urges passersby to repent in the raw, Young peels away layers of pretense to reveal her characters' basic instincts. She... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560850841
• ISBN13: 9781560850847
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Signature Books
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Brilliantly sharky Mormon stories

In the introduction to _Love Chains_, Young talks about the "sharks" which inhabit her stories: difficult issues, immoral choices, even a bit of swearing. She does not write simple faith-promoting out to shock. The immorality portrayed is usually seen from the point-of-view of a character who is repulsed by what she/he sees. Young in no way glorifies the sharks, she has her characters seek for ways to defeat or at least deal with them. Victory over the sharks usually doesn't occur within the bounds of these short stories, but at least there are glimmers of hope, often found in unlikely places. The words "love chains" refer to a motif that runs through the stories. None of her characters are lone individuals (could any such story about Mormons exist?). Chains made of powerful emotion bind people together, even long after the fraying of time or betrayal. The 1997 book is divided into four sections, "Husbands and Wives", "Brothers and Sisters", "Hermanos y Hermanas", and "Exes". Each features different kinds of love chains. Even between a divorced couple, chains of feeling and responsibility remain strong. This is particularly true when there is a child from a broken marriage. Even after love between the couple is gone, the child acts as a "love chain," forever binding them together. Most of the stories from the "Exes" section are about children torn between divorced parents, with the added complication of being torn between oneparent's apostasy and the other's faith. What's a mother to do, when she fears her child is being harmed by her father's apostasy? These are tough questions, and Young provides no easy answers. On the cover of the books is a drawing of a baby walking with the help of parents' hands on both sides. The parents are not connected directly to each other in the picture, but since both are holding on to the child, they are linked together in a chain.Another kind of love chain in these stories is that of God between a couple, sealing and strengthening their marriage. We see this idea at the end of Young's play "Dear Stone," when the memory of his promise before God and angels in the temple helps to bring a husband back from his plans to end his marriage to a woman with MS. The idea is more comically, but still sublimely, represented in the story "God on Donahue," the climax of the "Husbands and Wives" group of stories. This is a hilarious tale about an elderly, eccentric Utah couple who appear on the Donahue show for weird reasons I won't explain. On the way to Los Angeles, the husband happens upon a vagrant at a rest stop, and feels convinced that this is God going incognito. The three of them appear on the show, and are grilled by Phil Donahue about their relationship. (By the way, the portrayal of Donahue as Lord of This World (daytime television) is brilliantly wicked). The tide begins to turn against Donahue, and the husband begins to realize his past unfairness to his wife, after this exc