Parts Unknown

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.

Actions have consequences. This is an elementary truism, but one that is often forgotten during the course of occurrence of mundane events. This fundamental, immutable law is the basis for PARTS UNKNOWN, the debut novel by Kevin Brennan, a tale that succeeds so well across all strata of criteria that the reader is both comforted and haunted by it long after the final words of it are read.PARTS UNKNOWN begins with the words of Nora, the wife of Bill Argus. As a young man in his 20s, Argus abandoned without warning his wife Annie and their toddler son Hayes, moving to the California desert and living with hermit-like simplicity while, over the following decades, acquiring notoriety as a kind of Ansel Adams. In his 60s, Argus finds himself slowly coming to realize the need to see those who he had left behind so abruptly. Nora, some 20 years his junior, supports him in this journey with a gentleness and subtle bemusement that makes it impossible to not fall in love with her within the first few pages. While the tale of Argus' eventual homecoming is told through Nora's eye and voice, hers is not the only viewpoint revealed. PARTS UNKNOWN jumps back and forth in time and space, so we learn of Argus as a young man, his parents, Annie's family and, of course, Hayes. But this story is as much Nora's as that of Argus's.Nora's father abandoned her and her mother, as well, when Nora was a toddler; the resultant attraction for Nora to Argus is obvious, subtly noted though not fully explored. But then again, it doesn't need to be. As the multiple intergenerational accounts are gently presented and the tale gradually but inexorably proceeds to the reunion of Argus, a senile Annie and an innocently unaware Hayes, one is reminded of some of the best work of John Steinbeck and, to a lesser extent, that of Cormac McCarthy. The consequences of Argus's departure and return are as quietly intense as anything you will read this year.PARTS UNKNOWN is a complex tale, beautifully and simply related, which saves the appearance of some of its most interesting characters for the close of the book. Though it begs for a sequel detailing Nora's own reunion with her long-absent father, it is complete in itself. This is a tale that anyone, of any circumstance, can take to heart and call their own. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I really enjoyed reading this book. Once I met the characters I could not put the book down. I could not wait to turn the page to learn more. The main character in this book tries to go home after 40 years. This book had me thinking of my own family and how lucky I was to have such support from my family. This is a really good read. I like how the author shows you how each member of the family dealt with this young man's decision to leave and the decisions they made to deal with his abscence. By showing each character you get the full picture, not just one person's view of their situation. By the end of the book I felt I knew the characters personlly. I definitively recommend this book to all who love to read.

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.

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.