Parts Unknown: A Novel [Paperback]

Kevin Brennan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2004

As a young man, Bill Argus abandoned his wife, their young son, and his family's dairy farm in the Sonoma County hamlet of Pianto. Now sixty-three, the once-famous photographer is overcome with the need to find forgiveness from those he left behind. Journeying back to the small dreary California town, he is disoriented after finding a ragged skeleton of the boyhood farm he remembers, and a family unmoved and indifferent to his return.

Bill's awkward homecoming is seen through the eyes of his second wife, Nora (twenty years his junior), who has her own troubled family history. Bearing witness to Bill's reception in Pianto sparks in Nora a revisiting of her own complicated past, and soon, she too sets off on a spiritual journey to explore her own parts unknown.

Set against the wild beauty of the California desert, this deftly imagined first novel lovingly maps the diverse terrain of the human heart as it probes the intricate bonds of family and the complex nature of forgiveness and love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Forgiveness and retribution are key themes in newcomer Brennan's lyrical if slow-moving first novel, which tells the story of a man who abandons his responsibilities to pursue his creative needs. Bill Argus is 63 and a successful photographer of desert scenes when the novel begins. After four decades of guilt and remorse, he has finally decided to return to the tiny Northern California town of Pianto and make amends for his youthful sins. As a young man, he abandoned his 16-year-old wife, Annie, bound to him in a shotgun wedding, and left town. The story is narrated by Bill's second wife, Nora, who tenderly recounts her husband's struggles with guilt and his need to meet his son, Hayes. Nora interpolates her own fractured family life into the drama, revealing that her father abandoned her when she was only a baby. Back in Pianto, Bill and Nora find that his younger brother, Cam, picked up the pieces after Bill's departure by comforting Annie and taking Hayes under his wing. When Bill at last encounters his adult son, his decision to hide his true identity proves to be the ultimate test of will and honor. The final group photo shoot shamelessly but appropriately tugs at the heartstrings. Brennan's tone is smooth and conversational, but the frequent chronological shifts that fill in the backstory and add dimension to the characters are awkward and jarring and slow the narrative's momentum. Despite its sensitivity and poignancy, this debut lacks the adrenaline to keep it afloat. Northern California regional author appearances.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Realizing that you can never really go home again, but knowing that he must, photographer Bill Argus decides to revisit the town, the family, and the memories he deserted many years before. Seeking deliverance and reconciliation, 63-year-old Bill undertakes a momentous emotional and physical journey into the past to make peace with his present. Told through the somewhat jaundiced prism of his second wife's eyes, Bill's uneasy reunion with the people and life he abandoned in the harshly beautiful California desert becomes a catalyst for another journey of the soul and spirit. In relating both Bill's past and present experiences, Nora Argus must confront her own demons, spawned from an unhappy childhood and an unfulfilled relationship with her mother. Brennan intricately interweaves several interrelated stories into a lyrical testament to life, love, and redemption. A powerful debut novel from an exciting new talent. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (January 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060012773
• ISBN-13: 978-0060012779
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,752,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars California dreaming, December 24, 2002

By 

Ron Franscell, Author of 'Sourtoe Cocktail Club' - See all my reviews

This review is from: Parts Unknown: A Novel (Hardcover)

If you go into a very dark room on a bright day and pierce the window shade, the world outside shines in. On the opposite wall, you'll see it, in all its raw colors and motion, picture perfect.

Such are the physics of past and present - like the equal-and-opposite struggle between light and dark -- in "Parts Unknown," Northern California author Kevin Brennan's first novel of the mind and heart, of memory and dreams. But the physics of the camera obscura are reversed as Brennan's pinhole allows the darkness inside his characters to be projected on the living world.

Famed but fading desert photographer Bill Argus informs his young, second wife Nora that he wishes to return to his boyhood hometown of Pianto, Calif., to try to atone for abandoning his wife and young son 40 years before.

But when he learns his deserted family has erased his memory - the whole town conspires in the myth that his middle-aged son's real father was a heroic test pilot killed in a plane crash - Bill's journey turns inward, dragging him along the landscape of his past.

This journey into the past, through light and dark, across the sun-dappled ancient hills and headlands of rural Sonoma County, is largely chronicled by Nora. In Bill, she sees both a father-figure and her own reflection as a scarred, unrooted woman nearing 40, weighted down by her own history of loss and imperfect love.

Add "Parts Unknown" to the oeuvre of California stories that should transcend the state's borders All it needs is someone to pierce the shade and allow the light to shine through.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gem, December 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Parts Unknown: A Novel (Hardcover)

Each chapter of this book reads like a beautifully crafted short story, yet is integral to the larger tale, in which two family sagas are interweaved. Bill Argus, a once-famous landscape photographer, returns to the town of his birth to make amends for abandoning a wife and child forty years before. Nora, his second wife, recounts Bill's painful reunion with what remains of his family while revisiting her own complex and troubled history. With humor and a sense of divided loyalties, she guides Bill through the moral obstacles of his journey and learns about his youth, his flaws, and the unexpected aftereffects of his leaving. There is a poignant chapter late in the book, in which the prodigal Argus photographs the son he hasn't seen in forty years, yet his real identity is unknown to the son. Another powerful chapter is told in the first-person voices of the three important women Bill left behind. Yet another finds Nora's mother attending her wedding and surreptitiously taking back a gift that would have helped Nora understand herself and her mother more deeply. The tension and atmosphere are always moving without being sentimental. I could go on and on. This is an impressive first novel dealing with the many ways we learn to adapt to pain and disappointment so that we can carry on.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So many lives, February 19, 2003

By 

Lucy B (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Parts Unknown: A Novel (Hardcover)

This beautifully written book intertwines the stories of many different characters, all affected by the actions of one man, who in turn was the product of others' actions. Characters are formed by their roots in one place and in each other. The tangled web those roots form carries over time and distance, proving that no amount of time or mileage can cure the wounds we cause.

The narrative travels through different voices and different times, creating a consuming atmosphere. This is a book that is hard to put down and ends too soon.