Parts Unknown: A Novel

by Kevin Brennan

Parts Unknown is Kevin Brennan's masterfully rendered debut novel of a man's decision to leave behind the life intended for him and the turbulent emotions unleashed in his family when he attempts to make amends. 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 and redemption from those he left behind. Journeying back to the small, dreary California town, he is disoriented to find a ragged skeleton of the boyhood farm he remembered and his family unmoved and indifferent to his return. Bill's awkward homecoming is reported through the eyes of his second wife, Nora -- twenty years his junior -- who has her own troubled family history. Her father, much like Bill, deserted his family when Nora was just a toddler, never to return; and she has been estranged from her mother for more than half of her life. Bearing witness to Bill's reception by his brother, aunt, and his long-abandoned wife spark in Nora a revisiting of her complicated history, 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. Soulful and poignant, Kevin Brennan's Parts Unknown is a striking meditation on the elusive nature of redemption and marks the debut of a gifted new voice in fiction.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Kevin Brennan is the author of seven novels, including Parts Unknown (William Morrow/HarperCollins), Yesterday Road, and, coming in May '22, The Prospect. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Berkeley Fiction Review, Mid-American Review, Twin Pies, The Daily Drunk, Sledgehammer, Fictive Dream, Atlas and Alice, LEON Literary Review, MoonPark Review, Atticus Review, and others. He's also the editor of The Disappointed Housewife, a literary magazine for writers of offbeat and idiosyncratic fiction, poetry, and essays. Kevin lives with his wife in California's Sierra foothills.

Reviews

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is about a photographer, Bill Argus, a kind of desert Ansel Adams. He has a late mid-life crisis and decides to return to the small town and family that he had abruptly left forty years before. Argus had left his family without warning, and then, just as unexpectedly, he decides to go back. And he brings along his current wife, Nora, whose roughly the same age as the son Argus left behind.

The structure was a little difficult for me on to follow at first, with many shifts in time and character. But the characters quickly got under my skin. The bulk of it is the present day with Nora talking about about Argus’s reception, about how his first wife has a kind of dementia and how is own son was raised to believe that his father was killed in the Korean war. Some of the tension in the novel is everyone’s fear that Bill will crack and want to claim his son.

The story of why Bill Argus left his family unfolds through each character’s version of events. Nora goes down memory lane as well, but it’s own her past that she reflects on, not Argus’s. Yet, her past explains why she’s with Bill, why she goes with him on this trip, and why she is kind of the peacemaker, or person who tries brings everyone together.

The novel is also about the lies we tell each other and ourselves. People are lying left and right in this novel, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes not. It reads like a web that you get caught up into. The more you struggle against the lies, the more tied up you are in them.

And everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has his or her version of reality. Whether you like it or not, you have to come to grips with the idea that everyone has their set of memories, their idea of how things were. You want to blame someone, but, in a way, no one is to blame. They all did what they believed was the right thing to do.

This is the kind of novel I am likely to reread. Now that I know how it ends and where everyone fits, I want to start over and read with that added knowledge.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again Kevin Brennan has brought to life an intriguing blend of characters to create a compelling storyline.

In Parts Unknown we are introduced to family members whose varying degrees of character include secrecy, cruelty, shamefulness and innocence. Brennan shows us how one simple, or not so simple, decision made in our younger years can haunt and/or torment us throughout life. He then leads us, along with these people, into a rocky terrain of confronting others and ourselves as we question those decisions.

Once again I was impressed by Kevin Brennan's skill as a writer and look forward to that next novel, which I believe is on the conveyor belt. Thank you, and keep them coming Kevin.