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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060012779 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 01/06/2004 |
| Series: | Harper Perennial |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.62(w) x 8.69(h) x 0.72(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Parts Unknown
A Novel
Sour Inside
Nora
My husband, Bill Argus, always said that he took pictures just to catch the struggle between light and dark that was always in play, but it was obvious to me that he wanted to freeze moments in time. It was his big weakness. He couldn't hang on to his moments, or didn't want to, which was one reason he fled to the desert when he was still a young man and gave himself over to a life of photography and routine and extreme conditions.
At least until I came along. I softened things up for him quite a bit. Moved into his old hacienda outside Oasis, California, and married him a little while after that. Wedded bliss way out there with the rattlers and jackrabbits.
Most people hang on to their key moments by staying close to the people who helped make them, but Bill wasn't able to do that. He had left all those people behind. He still had some things in his head concerning them, but as the years went on -- forty of them by the time he was ready to go back -- those things had become confused or merged or fogged with the constant reinterpretations he'd indulged in. It was hard to tell what was true and what was imaginary anymore, and there were no pictures from home he could consult to help verify the record one way or the other. He often had to wonder, Did I dream that? Was she that beautiful? Was my old man as cold as I want to say he was?
Naturally, I was no help to him there. I had to take his word for it when he told me stories of growing up in Pianto, a little cow town in Northern California, the life of a cowman's son. His father had a cow ranch, never bigger than a hundred head, a wife, two boys, Bill and Cameron.
This was so long ago that I wasn't even born yet, and I'm looking at forty.
It was around the time of our ninth anniversary that Bill told me he had a new project in mind. He had turned sixty-three not long before, and his chest had been getting these aches that were finally proved to be nothing but acid reflux disorder. Bill didn't know what they were at first, these pains, thought his mortality was starting to claw at him from the inside, but in the throes of one of these attacks he got the idea to go back to Pianto and take some pictures. For a new book.
If you're a fan of Bill's, you know he hadn't put out a book of his black-and-whites since '82 or so, and that one didn't sell. He'd been a perennial calendar man after that, like a cut-rate Ansel Adams of the desert, but his pictures tended to depress people and even the calendars didn't move all that well. Bill liked the desert because it offered a lot of variations of the light and dark Slug-A-Thon that he was so fond of, and because he believed that the whole world would likely be a desert one day anyway.
But seriously, the idea of Bill Argus putting out a new book at the age of sixty-three was nothing less than pie in the sky. I knew immediately that if I agreed to go with him, I'd be indulging a late midlife crisis and possibly setting him back a few notches when things up there in Pianto proved not to match up to his mental pictures. On top of which, there could be problems.
For instance, he still had a kid up there.
A kid. The kid would be a little older than me by now.
Well, here is where I should say that Bill and I have a strange kind of simpatico, because my father left me when I was three years old, and Bill ran from his boy too. And Bill, like my daddy (I'm looking at forty and I still call him "daddy"!), never looked back, never contacted the boy or the ex-wife—except to bring the divorce to fruition -- never mentioned them in his interviews in Aperture or the little bios that accompanied gallery shows. In fact, like my daddy, Bill had no reliable idea that they were even still alive, just as they didn't know, now that he wasn't famous anymore, whether he was alive or dead.
He didn't know whether they cared either.
There was one moment that Bill could pinpoint when he made the significant choice to remain invisible. That was in 1977, when he got word from his younger brother, Cameron, that both parents had died in a car accident and maybe it was time for Bill to come back home. This was during the height of Bill's fame, such as it was, and he was torn. He didn't think he could face his son and wife, yet he felt like he ought to be there to acknowledge his parents, even though his old man had always been a colossal bastard. Mom was an innocent, though. He felt like he owed her something. And Cameron too.
He kept Cam's letter taped to his darkroom wall. Imagine, a blunt letter to bring news like that! Had Cameron lost his mind? In tight little handwriting, red ink, it said, among other particulars, "Mom and Dad were hit by a train. You missed the funeral but the reading of the will ought to be worth the trip."
It reeked of cynical intent. Scared the shit out of Bill. Both parents dead in one bloody miscalculation, and he couldn't decide what to do. Cam needed him, it sounded like, yet it could also be a trap. How can you trust a brother you haven't seen in more than fifteen years?
Parts UnknownA Novel. Copyright © by Kevin Brennan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
A masterfully rendered debut novel of a man's decision to leave the life intended for him behind, and the turbulent emotions unleashed in his family when attempts to make amends, Kevin Brennan's riveting debut novel Parts Unknown surrounds the families of photographer Bill Argus and his wife, Nora.
Many years before the present action, Bill had abandoned his first wife and their child and now, at the age of sixty-three, wishes to return to his hometown of Pianto, California, for a shot at redemption. Through Nora's eyes, his dubious homecoming is reported, along with Nora's own troubled family history and long-time estrangement from her mother. Her father, much like Bill, had left the family when Nora was a child, and he hasn't been heard from since. Bill's reception by his brother, Cameron, his Aunt Carmen, and his ex-wife Annie spark in Nora a revisiting of her speckled past, with the themes of guilt, regret, and forgiveness on her mind as she witnesses Bill's clumsy reappearance in Pianto.
Through other, third-person points of view, the novel brings the past into focus, studying the prism of family relationships behind the latter day action. Moments of epiphany for Bill's mother and father, Annie, Annie's parents, Cameron, and Bill's son, Hayes -- all in various time frames -- reveal to the reader the elaborate personal rivalries and choked emotions that impede reconciliation. Set in the California desert and Sonoma County, this striking meditation on the elusive nature of redemption 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.
Questions for Discussion
- Kevin Brennan had the character of Bill Argus in mind for over thirty years -- dating back to time he spent in a Blythe, California hospital -- before Argus appeared as a character in this novel. Brennan's family had been in a car accident and was laid up in a desert town for a few days, during which time an older gentleman who happened to be a photographer was being treated for appendicitis. Brennan engaged his fellow patient in conversation and learned that this man lived alone in the desert and occupied himself taking pictures. As Brennan left Blythe and the hospital behind, the memory of the photographer stayed with him, and he began to wonder how a man might have slouched his way into such a lifestyle. Parts Unknown was his answer. Can you think of an individual who briefly flitted through your own life -- someone whose lifestyle was either contradictory to your own, or who simply intrigued you? If you were to write a book about this individual what do you think you would learn about yourself?
- The character of Bill Argus is revealed in the third person, where almost all of the other characters in the novel narrate part of the story. Discuss how each voice unveils a new perspective on the story. Which narrator did you trust the most? Whose voice did you feel the most drawn to? Whose voice did you trust the least? Do you wish Bill Argus had narrated a passage in the first person? Discuss how you feel this would have changed the novel.
- How did the knowledge that Nora had engaged in prostitution influence your opinion of her? Do you feel that her choice was a result of her abusive childhood? Or do you think it was simply a pragmatic decision that insured her economic survival?
- Does Bill recognize his pathological and cruel treatment of Cam as a direct result of abuse from his father? Do you think that he realized that he could not control his impulses as an adolescent because of his own mistreatment by Bad Ray? Discuss his peyote and Wild Turkey influenced confrontation with Bad Ray long after his father's death (page 165). What does Bill learn?
- If you were a resident of Pianto, do you feel that you would have been able to keep the secret of Hayes' paternity? Discuss the concept of an open secret. How would/does it feel be someone who keeps up an illusion at the request of others? How would you cope if you were to find out your reality had been manufactured? How do you think Hayes would react if he were to learn the truth?
- How does Nora's relationship with Bill's family change over the course of the novel? How does she come to feel about her husband's brother and the family she has married into? How does she repay their hospitality and help to broker the peace between the family members? How does Nora help Bill with his homecoming? What does she offer to him in terms of strength, and comfort and compassion? Discuss what you think Nora and Bill speak of under the covers each night in his brother's house. Do you think that Bill would have returned to Pianto if Nora had not been at his side?
- Nora feels such an intimate connection to a photo taken by Bill Argus that she goes on a desperate search for the man who took the picture -- thinking that he might have answers for her. Is there a work of art, a piece of music, a film, or a book that has ever driven you to try to connect with the artist? What questions did/would you have for them? What would you want them to offer to you?
- The fictional town of Pianto is said to mean "we wept" in Italian. Why do you think Kevin Brennan deliberately chose this translation? What resonance does it add to the story?
- Compare and contrast Annie and Cary Lee. How did each cope with abandonment by their husbands and the knowledge that had been left to raise their child on their own? Discuss Cam as a father figure as contrasted to the father's of Nora, Bill and Annie. Who was most emotionally equipped to shelter and raise a child? How did the experience of each major character as a child impact their emotional development?
- The Denver Post wrote that "[Parts Unknown] roasts the old chestnut that male writers cannot convincingly tell stories from female perspectives. Brennan does it with grace, wit and beauty." How did you feel about Brennan's ability to write from the female perspective? Did you feel that the transitions between male and female perspectives were seamless, or did you think he had more success in one gender over the other?
- Bill's mother had to live a life in Pianto pretending not to be the grandmother of her only grandchild due to Bill's desertion of Annie. Discuss the emotional impact of maintaining the lie. How was Miranda's dream for her life changed by Bill's desertion? How was Annie's mother changed by her husband's banishment of Annie from their family?
- Discuss why you thought it was significant to the author to use part titles for each section of the story. What did you think of Brennan's choices for the part titles? How did it influence your understanding of each section? Also discuss the meaning of the novel's title Parts Unknown as it relates to the narration of the novel -- each chapter almost its own short story, telling a fragment of the larger tale from a different character's perspective, with many parts unknown to the other characters of the story that are only shared with the reader. Discuss other reasons Brennan titled his novel Parts Unknown.
About the Author
Kevin Brennan was born and raised in St. Louis. After stops in Virginia, London, San Diego, and San Francisco, he has settled in Northern California with his wife and surrogate children, Ned (a dog) and Nip (a cat). Now forty-six, he has rung in the New Year in Red Square, performed as a busker in the London Underground, wandered the California desert, and auditioned unsuccessfully for a reality television series. He and his wife were married in Arezzo, Italy, having navigated a tortuous Italian bureaucracy as well as the Autostrada in a rented Fiat Tipo. Driving in Rome nearly killed him.