Parts Left Out

by Thomas Ogden

Published 1 January 2013
The Parts Left Out is a suspenseful story of a poor Kansas wheat-farming family in which each generation holds the next in its deadly grip until murderous opposition explodes. The beautifully drawn characters, all sympathetic in their own ways, are determined to escape the fate that has been dealt them, and some seem close to doing so.'Thomas Ogden, who is perhaps the most renowned psychoanalyst writing today, demonstrates his prowess as a writer of fiction in his stunning debut novel, The Parts Left Out. His keen eye for the complexity of human relationships and human frailties makes the characters so real and compelling that they seem to step out of the page. Ogden's novel confirms that the truest concepts developed in psychoanalysis have already appeared in the insight of the artist. This story takes hold of the reader in its opening paragraphs and does not let go until its heart-wrenching ending has been told. I found this book almost impossible to put down.'- Antonino Ferro, M.D., President of the Italian Psychoanalytic Association

The Hands of Gravity and Chance is a spell-binding story in which parents find themselves promising and then rescinding what they do not have to give. The story opens with the fall of a thirteen-year-old girl down the stairs of the family house, an event that generates fault lines that spread both forward and backward in time, releasing an explosive energy of love and fear, bitterness and remorse.