The Imagined Life

by Andrew Porter

From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer, a taut, elegiac novel about a man trying to uncover the truth about the father who left him behind

Steven Mills has reached a crossroads. His wife and son have left, and they may not return. Which leaves him determined to find out what happened to his own father, a brilliant, charismatic professor who disappeared in 1984 when Steve was twelve, on a wave of ignominy.

As Steve drives up the coast of California, seeking out his father’s friends, family members, and former colleagues, the novel offers us tantalizing glimpses into Steve’s childhood—his parents’ legendary pool parties, the black-and-white films on the backyard projector, secrets shared with his closest friend. Each conversation in the present reveals another layer of his father’s past, another insight into his disappearance. Yet with every revelation, his father becomes more difficult to recognize. And, with every insight, Steve must confront truths about his own life.

Rich in atmosphere, and with a stunningly sure-footed emotional compass, The Imagined Life is a probing, nostalgic novel about the impossibility of understanding one’s parents, about first loves and failures, about lost innocence, about the unbreakable bonds between a father and a son.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Contemporary, LGBT, Mental Health, Family

289 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 15, 2025

About the author

Andrew Porter is the author of four books, including the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter (Vintage/Penguin Random House), which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the novel In Between Days (Knopf), which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, an IndieBound “Indie Next” selection, and the San Antonio Express News’s “Fictional Work of the Year,” the short story collection The Disappeared (Knopf), which was published in April 2023 and longlisted for The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and the novel The Imagined Life, which was published by Knopf in 2025 and is longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Porter’s books have been published in foreign editions in the UK and Australia and translated into numerous languages, including French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Bulgarian, and Korean.

In addition to winning the Flannery O’Connor Award, his collection, The Theory of Light and Matter, received Foreword Magazine’s “Book of the Year” Award for Short Fiction, was a finalist for The Steven Turner Award, The Paterson Prize and The WLT Book Award, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and was selected by both The Kansas City Star and The San Antonio Express-News as one of the “Best Books of the Year.”

The recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the James Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the W.K. Rose Foundation, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Porter’s short stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, One Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, The Missouri Review, American Short Fiction, Narrative Magazine, Epoch, Story, The Colorado Review, Electric Literature, and Texas Monthly, among others. He has had his work read on NPR’s Selected Shorts and twice selected as one of the Distinguished Stories of the Year by Best American Short Stories. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Porter is currently a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Trinity University in San Antonio.
www.andrewporterwriter.com

Reviews

[Canadian Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen is 50 years old. He is on a quest to find out what happened to his father who left and disappeared from him and his mother's life, 40 years ago. He is seeking answers to his disappearance.What drove him to leave? Hide? His own wife and son having recently left.

His recall of his boyhood past, however, doesn’t align with the truth that is hidden. He remembers his father being a scholar, a brilliant and charismatic man, hosting pool parties with colleagues and friends. But the reality was, he was mentally ill and gay, and the 1980’s were still far away from diagnosing and accepting such realities.

Porter’s writing is engaging and hypnotic; easily entrancing me with his language.

Themes of abandonment; mental illness; homosexuality; identity. A layered and complex revealing of the man Steven knew as his father and how others perceived him.

This was beautiful but sad and haunting.
5⭐️

Thanks Tracy for sharing your copy!

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5
Steven is 50 yrs old and is in a search of what happened to his father, 40 years after he left home when Steven was 12yrs old back in the mid-eighties.
His father was denied tenure at the college that he taught at and it just sent him over the edge.
This is the story of a family on the brink.. a mother that tried to keep the family’s balance while everything in the family was shifting.
Very atmospheric, set in the Bay area of California..
a life of pool parties, outside movie screenings, etc
Really great writing, I enjoyed it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC

[Terrie Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sentimental. Troubling. Thought-provoking. Satisfying...

Steven Mills is searching for answers as to why his father left him and his mother in 1984, when he was 12. He has always heard the rumors and has lived with them. Now, he wants to know the truth...

The Imagined Life is a character study of a family, primarily the relationship between the father and son. It's a story set in California but could have occurred anywhere. It is about the loss of innocence and trying to figure out the riddles of the past.

At one point, I hoped for less repetition about Stephen's childhood and more insight into his father's disappearance. Then, I realized the pace reflects how Steven is wrestling, struggling, sifting through his memories, and rehashing past conversations with relatives, his father's friends, and colleagues. It was a lot to unpack and digest.

The Imagined Life is a heartbreaking, yet hopeful story. Porter's writing is simple and reflects the main character's mood as the story progresses in Steven's first-person narrative. The ending is surprising and poignant!

4.25⭐

Thank you to Knopf and Andrew Porter for the gifted DRC through NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[TracyGH · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome to my 8th FIVE STAR READ for 2025. 🙌

"In the imagined life, so much is different..."

It is always amazing when you pick up a book with zero expectations and you are taken into a magical story. California - the 80s. As an 80s child, I appreciated the memories that this book brought to the forefront. Remember when a VCR was a big thing to purchase? Remember when your parents allowed you to go the beach/park without a cell phone or any idea if you were safe or not? Remember Stevie Nicks with the feathered hair?

A son looks for an estranged father. A father who was brilliant, charismatic, troubled, lost and mentally ill. The son realizes as he is going through his own life as a husband and a father that he is angry. In many ways the son watched the trauma of his father's ruin. He harbors resentment and emotional detachment that is causing his current married life to be in dangerous waters.

This is a work of fiction but easily could be a memoir. It pulls you in and in some ways it is hard to look away at what you know is surely coming. This story will not be for everyone. If you were to ask me why I gave this five stars it would be because it stirred emotions in me. Engaging without being flashy and self-serving.

Their are many life lessons, especially in the last 10% of the book. This will stay with me for a long time.

TW: drug use

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been seeing speculations that this book could be on the Booker Long list coming out end of June 2025. I'm still thinking about it and think it might be a good win for it as there was much about it I liked. (review from earlier this year follows).


I picked up this book due to its cover art (as is shown on Libby) and because I thought it was about an architect in Southern California in the 1970’s. I grew up in Southern California in the 1960’s and was interested in how it would be portrayed. I find it interesting how books can call to me and how reading a book will stick and make me think even though it may not be a particularly great book, yet there are certain books that seem to speak just to us. This is one of those books for me. It so mirrored my own experience it was a little uncanny. It is the story of a 11-year-old boy during the year (in the early 1980’s in Southern California) when the life he has known falls apart, his father has a break down and disappears. This boy is now a man in his 50’s seeking to find out what happened and why and perhaps to find his father after all this time—though he is not sure if that would be the best outcome or the one he is looking for.

It made me think about how in the past one could walk away from a life and just disappear. Now that is no longer possible, with the internet, phones, credit cards—seems we can hardly disappear on a walk around the block much less from our lives and homes. It is a story on how this year and events sent waves through the rest of this man’s life. And that got me thinking about how pivotal life experiences often become the events around which a life circles even if one is not aware.

There is not an architect in this story at all, though the cover art shows a quintessential Southern California house (not too different from the one I grew up in). The father is a professor at a Southern California college. The story gives a rough outline of his background. It is told by his son watching the year his father was trying to attain tenure and the various people and things that he recalls about the time and what might of led to his father’s break down and disappearance. And the aftermath, as he is now a grown man, having problems in his own marriage and trying to understand his anger, fears, regrets that may have sprung from this pivotal point in his own life.

At the beginning of the book as I was all in, it started out 4 or 5 star but as it continued on it began to lose some of its brightness. It descended into regrets and a maudlin tone that took away from the narrative for me. So it is hard to put a star value. The writing is very good, the story a good one, largely a come of age novel and one that highlights how early events shape a life and how difficult it is to break from that, especially without help. I did like it a lot and may come back and change its stars but for now I’ll give it four.

It is an excellent audio book, the narration done by Lee Osorio. I would recommend it in that form,

[Tini · Rating 5 out of 5]

The lives we imagine, the truths we find.

4.5 stars rounded up.

After his own family life falls apart, Steven Mills sets out to uncover what happened to his father - a brilliant, magnetic professor who vanished in 1984 when Steve was twelve, leaving behind a cloud of scandal and unanswered questions. Driving up the California coast, Steve retraces his father's past through the people who knew him best. The story moves fluidly between past and present - from sunlit childhood summers filled with backyard movie nights and shimmering pool parties to the quieter, more painful reckonings of adulthood. Each encounter brings Steve closer to understanding his father, but also forces him to confront the truths he’s avoided in his own life.

Andrew Porter's writing is measured and elegant, the kind that doesn't call attention to itself but carries an incredible emotional weight. His characters are drawn with compassion and precision. Not surprisingly, this novel, though fictional, feels as personal and as complex as a memoir: deeply introspective, quietly emotional, and rich with atmosphere. "The Imagined Life" even unfolds like a memory - fragmented, tender, and full of quiet truths; leaving gaps, and holding onto what matters most.

A beautifully written meditation on family, loss, and the limits of truly knowing another person - even someone you love -, "The Imagined Life" is haunting, nostalgic, and profoundly human.

[Bobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmmmmmm. You know those gold scales that are in like corrupt judges offices in John Grisham adaptations? Well picture this book being set on each side of one of dem scales and one side is loved it and one is hated it. And omg it can’t be, they’re perfectly balanced!

Didn’t love, didn’t hate. I thought it was a good book. Probably 3.5 rounded up to four. The author definitely has the ability to narrate the emotions of his protagonist well, but the problem is he repeats those same emotions and situations on the very next page. Several times I was like wait didn’t he JUST SAY THAT?? It happened so often that the emotional impact of the book became regressive rather than progressive as the novel went forward.

This book did at least meet the expectations I had for it in that it was a son with troubled father tale. I soon plan to read Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett and look forward to sharing my notes with myself and maybe all you troublemakers.

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having lived in California, once upon a time, I could easily envision parts of this story set in the era of the 70’s and the years that followed. This was, for me, a very moving read.

This covers another time, when women were meant to be wives who catered to their husbands, and tended to their family, but also the blooming of the era of ‘free love’ to some extent.

A story of a husband, wife, and a son who live in California, whose lives begin to change as the cultural movement begins to blossom into a combination of cultural, sexual and more liberal attitudes about sex and morals.

A very engaging read, and a glimpse into another time, a journey for the son to find a path to reach his father, and perhaps to make amends.


Pub Date: 15 Apr 2025


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

i can't believe this book is under 300 pages. it feels infinitely longer and i mean that in the best way possible. the best book i've read in quite awhile

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

At a crossroads in his own life, Steven Mills, is seeking answers about his father's disappearance forty years earlier. On surface, they were a happy middle class family - his father, an academic, was seeking tenure at the college he was teaching at. His mother, a nurse's aid, was the doting wife, who often threw parties for her husband's colleagues and friends. There was a lot of drinking, swimming in the pool and other shenanigans.

As a little boy, Steven was watching from the windows, and was listening without being seen.
How much can a child really understand? How reliable is anyone's memory?

The adult Steven is tracking down old acquaintances, former friends and colleagues, trying to piece together what had happened.

People are complicated, multi-faceted, and very selfish. Throw in unresolved trauma and some mental health issues, and life is one big mess.

This was a beautifully written, melancholic novel.

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Although this is fictional it very much felt like a memoir. After his own marriage and relationship with his son falters, our main character Steven goes on a quest to discover the truth about his father who disappeared in 1984, even reaching out to those close to his father. The book is mainly about relationship dynamics between a father and son with themes of marriage, fatherhood, family secrets, acceptance and forgiveness. This beautifully written story drew me in immediately with its realistic portrayal of a man searching for his own identity. Steven’s life and family relationships are peeled back in layers, each layer revealing his childhood up to the present time. This was a wonderful, bittersweet story that I won’t soon forget. I would definitely recommend it. Pub. 4/15/25

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[John Caleb Grenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE IMAGINED LIFE
By @andrew.porter.writer
Thank you @aaknopf for this copy! Out now.

Picture me closing this book. Standing up in a theatre full of deep red seats. In a sharp black tuxedo. Clapping, vigorously. Just like the Shia LaBoeuf gif. Because that’s what I’m doing. This one gets a standing ovation.

For readers of ANYONE’S GHOST, LION, and THE BEE STING, this cinematic novel pulls out all the stops that brought Andrew Porter his accolades for his two short story collections, and then some as a boy, now a man, seeks to understand his father’s disappearance and realizes how much they have in common.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s not a showy novel, but it’s contemplative tastefulness never stops shining.

Finally though—a book that’s all vibes AND has a brisk plot. There is a sense of artful architecture, of classical music to this book that makes it masterful, emotional, and enjoyable. Did I say classical music? I also mean rock and punk rock. It’s got both, all of them.

Rich with design and intuition, THE IMAGINED LIFE exemplifies Porter’s social observation and documentation of how humans connect and clash, all mirrored with an ever present mid-century modern California middle class party scene surrounded by palm trees and succulent gardens.

THE IMAGINED LIFE is a satisfying, engaging, richly realized novel from a class act author everyone should be reading.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

In one of the last letters that my father wrote to my mother before she moved out to Berkeley to join him, before they married, he quoted a series of passages from Proust on the theme of death. Even now, thinking back on that time, trying to imagine it, it seems strange to me that he'd choose to conclude what had otherwise been a fairly romantic two-year correspondence on such an ominous note ……… There was something unusually grave and foreboding about it, but also strangely prescient, and though I can't remember all of the passages he quoted, there was one I wrote down in my journal and that I still return to from time to time, especially when I'm feeling low:

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

This idea of "traveling abroad," of death being a kind of travel, and of the dead not really dying for us immediately, these are things that I often thought about when I thought about my mother, or Chau, or other people in my life that I'd lost, and fora long time they were concepts I applied to my father when I thought about him, when I believed, as I did for a long time, he was dead.

The first party narrator Steven Mills (a writer and teacher), his marriage on pause having moved out of the house where his wife (a Social cause activist) and young son live, sets out to drive the Coast of California to try to trace and re-understand the story of his charismatic but volatile English literature academic father.

The latter in 1984 (when Steven was a teenager) disappeared from the family home (and their lives) after a series of on-off estrangements with Steven’s mother (connected both to his mental state – which appears to be some form of manic-depression - and his relationship with another male academic) and a similarly connected failure to get tenure at his University despite (or possibly because of) his popularity with students and his body of publications.

Having for years due to his anger at his father not tried to trace him – Steven’s attempts now to look for traces of his father and to re-examine his own memories are also about him trying to understand how this formative experience has adversely influenced his future relationships and in particular his seeming inability to commit to and invest in his marriage – a failure which lead to his wife’s suggestion of a temporary separation.

A 1960s Italian arthouse film (L’Avventura - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Avv...) which Steven remembers watching with his father on the day of the latter’s disappearance sets us up that there may be no solution to the mystery of his father’s disappearance of fate/current hereabouts so that in many ways it’s a surprise when we do get some resolution here (partly on the first albeit open to dispute, definitively on the second) but less of a surprise that Steven realises that his search was really an interior one and

In many ways this novel could be said to cover a number of relatively cliched topics: a largely campus (or more accurately mostly off-campus but still dominated by faculty members) novel; an examination of not just parent-child relationships but also the idea of a missing father; and to represent a relatively privileged group of individuals (set mainly in the Bay Area of California even the “modest” houses have swimming pools and decent size gardens) and at least pre-fall the life of the narrator and his parents is one of glamorous pool parties; as well as some not exactly uncharted social themes – the way in which homosexuality could only be acknowledged in small private social circles even in liberal 1980s California academia and how its more public expression could still ruin social cachet and acceptability; even a putative and explorative same-sex attraction as a young man (Steven’s close friendship with Chau while a side story to the novel is perhaps one of its strongest aspects – particularly as we sense how Steven’s lack of closeness with his father, his father’s close relationships with male friends and particularly the attractive colleague all impact on his unsuccessful attempts to really understand his feelings for Chau, so foreshadowing how similar issues will recur in his life and pertinently for the novel his marriage and own fatherhood).

And more generally despite the familiar topics this is a very smoothly executed, tightly written (the blurb’s description of “taut” is not misleading) novel with almost mannered prose which examines memory and time (Proust is a repeating and explicit reference) and rumours (rather more clunkily the Fleetwood Mac album of the same name is something of a lodestone for the teenage Steven, desperately trying to understand a father he still admires despite the erratic nature of his parenting and general behaviour) but in the context of family relationships.

It is also one I read effectively cover to cover (in an airport lounge and then pre-departure on the flight) which was an enjoyable and mentally satisfying reader experience.

If I had a doubt though it is that a book very much about memories, will I suspect not prove particularly memorable – not I think due to the writing but to the rather uninteresting protagonists/setting.

Nevertheless (with this caveat) recommended.

[Amina · Rating 3 out of 5]

✰ 2.75 stars ✰

“ The true paradises are the paradises we have lost.”

It reads very much like a​ coming-of-age introspective memoir, alternating between the summer of 1983, with eleven-year-old Steven Mills' final months before his father's sudden disappearance from the family, without explanation, and present-day where he's on the search of retracing those footsteps of the past​. 📝

It's a series of fragments, snapshots, vague images that shape his memory, almost as if it may be impossible that these moments ever took place, only to realize that buried in these brief glimpses in time, fleeting moments that add up to nothing may be the answers he was looking for all along.​

​​ ​“​​I wasn’t out to find him, just to understand him and to understand what had happened to him. That was it. That’s all this was about.”

There's ​a lot​ I could say could be chalked up to conveniently much like the ​what if​ game, ​or had it​ not been for​ this or this, maybe​ - maybe ​The ​Imagined ​Life​ could have been a reality. 💔​ And I did not feel sad or frustrated​. For a wasted life, yes. But it was like just this numbness of delayed responses. Like even grieving or knowing this late is just pointless.​ 😕

If ​someone​ could not be trusted to trust their judgment how many years of closure could have been given to grant them a peace of mind. How dare anyone take that away from them and only and if he was so I'll, would it have mattered​? What a joke!​ 😢😠

​*verbatim my notes after reading, but proofread because in my anger, my grammar is atrocious*

That only when that choice no longer has a real obstacle to it - that it is taken out of the equation, when key characters who also played a part in keeping Steven in the dark are no longer present, only then do you deem it acceptable to share the truth with him?​ 😒

​ “Why would someone go to the trouble of making a mystery, only to provide no answer to that mystery in the end? It seemed to make no sense.​”

​​I​t's the opportunities wasted and lost that stings more than anything - that you almost want it to hurt and make yourself feel guilty for how it could have been prevented sooner, that you could shoulder the blame just a bit...​ 🥺 Maybe I'm reading it wrong, I don't know. Maybe it's trying to teach us not to make the same mistake - the error of judgment based on misplaced anger - ​that Steven did to prevent a fate that he chanced upon.



Do I sympathize with Steven's father??? If Steven's mother was aware of what he was up to - knowingly? ​Why would she be upset by it??? it just felt too forceful in creating angst that could have been resolved if there was not so much secrecy and unspoken communication. 😮‍💨​ You can say it had to do with the time - the late 70s, early 80s, the prevalent homophobic attitude, the inexperienced outlook on mental health - but ​something was missing....

Does that make me unsympathetic and cold-hearted? I feel that way, writing it out.​ 😞 Like, I was not able to understand the deeply emotional burden his father was dealing with. I do know what it feels like wanting to know the truth and how frustrating it is when you can't seem to find someone who just disappeared from your life. ​Maybe my own personal airs were getting in the way of appreciating it.​ 🙍🏻‍♀️

​ ​“And what if you don’t get the answers you want?” she said. “What if you don’t get any closure?”

“Then I don’t,” I said. “But at least I tried.​”

I respect the overall message; I do. 🙂‍↕️​ Neglectfulness is coming forth as one of the most painful ways of discovering the death of loved ones; so it is important. I ​just​ wish the discovery could have been more emotional than annoying. ​😞 Cuz everything that happened after, aggravated me deeper and deeper that all the good points of building up the mystery went down the drain.​ 🌀

I'm sure also that as a father-son story, it is one that will resonate on missed opportunities and the chance to reclaim something lost to you ​by 'a creation of my unreliable memory, an idealized version​ of something I wanted rather than something I had'​. ❤️‍🩹​ I ​suppose what​ really kept me going was wanting to know the truth; and when that didn't turn out quite as I expected, it didn't quite give me the satisfied closure that I should have felt.​ 😔

[Heather Bixby · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️

Wow, I really enjoyed this book! The Imagined Life follows Steven as he searches for his missing father. As the reader, we follow Steven as he reflects on and comes to terms with trauma that he endured as a child. The writing is beautiful and the story is heartbreaking and I enjoyed all of it.

This is my first book by Andrew Porter, but it certainly won’t be my last.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an advanced copy of this novel.

[Melinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am quickly becoming a fan of everything Andrew Porter writes! I read his short story collection The Disappeared last fall and it to totally blew me away. The Imagined Life is another beautifully written and and moving book. It's heartbreaking but also hopeful, and the eighties pop culture is spot on. 5+ stars.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fantastic! My first from this author. I had an Arc of this book. This will be out in April, I can’t recommend it enough!

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sounded so interesting: a man searching for the reasons behind his father’s disappearance with lots of 60’s and 70’s California as a setting. I very much enjoyed the scenes of life in California at that time – pool parties, drugs, sex (including the ostracism of being gay), music, academic life and daily life. These scenes were drawn in wonderfully tangible detail. In addition, the writing was lovely and contemplative. This is a story of fathers and sons, told from the perspective of a son abandoned by his father.
Unfortunately, I could not get deeply into the characters and the storyline seemed somewhat repetitive. (I think that at this point I’m just not that much into reading about teenage boys.) This is a nicely written novel, but it wasn’t a perfect fit for me.

[ritareadthat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you ever wonder how the subconscious works? Or fate? If you believe in such a thing? I do often, but it's not something that I have delved into very deeply. I had second-guessed my intuition for years when I was younger, due to complex reasons involving others. Just now, I was once again floored by how wise the universe can be.

Fair warning, this will be a long post, and if you have read my reviews by now, you know I can ramble. I won't apologize for it. You can either choose to read all of it or not. But I hope you read; life is full of decisions we either make or we don't, and some things in life, but not all, can be left up to pure chance. Maybe you were meant to read this?

This is the second of three MMC (male main character) coming-of-age novels that I have read in the last several months. I actually read this back in July—it's my last review to post from the month—and I kept putting it off. The timing just didn't feel right. There were also reasons for the delay—one, I wanted to obtain a copy of the physical book (I had read the ARC from NetGalley initially), and two, I was trying to get my thoughts together as to what to say. I loved The Imagined Life, having given it a solid 4.5-star rating initially, but reminiscing now, and looking at my notes, I do think it is a 5-star book. I have thought of it many times over the last few months.

I say all of this to advance myself in time to yesterday, when I decided to go for a walk before work for actual exercise; the weather has changed in PA, and fall is truly now here. I threw a couple books in my backpack, and off I went. I did my usual "exercise" walk, which includes a loop around F&M College. (The photos I have posted in my Instagram post on this book are all from the campus.) I somehow had forgotten they had these amazing blue Adirondack chairs. It's funny how the mind works, as for 16 years I lived directly across the street from the campus. I have used these same chairs in photoshoots innumerable times during my photography career. The chairs were perfect for photos of The Imagined Life.

I now sit down this morning (seriously mere minutes ago) and open up my Kindle highlighted notes for this book, the very FIRST one being on page 7...

"He had an old 16mm Bell & Howell projector from the 1960s, which he'd inherited from an old friend and colleague at F&M College in Pennsylvania and which he used to send up old movies onto the side wall of our cabana house..."

I seriously almost fell off the couch. That wave of intense feeling that overtakes you when you have one of those "holy sh*t" moments overwhelmed me. I had completely forgotten that Steven Mills' father had lived in Pennsylvania, and not just Pennsylvania, but in my exact town. I did not recall this when I took these photos yesterday. How much of life do we leave up to chance? How much can we blame on intuition or kismet? It seems that the sequence of events that led me to write this post, on this exact day, was meant to be.

Our story in The Imagined Life is set mostly within flashbacks from 1984, the year that Steven was 12, and the more present day, when Steven is a mid-to-late 40s adult who is desperate to uncover the truth of why his father disappeared when he was 12. The feel of Old Hollywood and the nostalgia of that bygone era are robust within these pages. Stephen details all of the pool parties his father would hold at their house in Fullerton, CA, the camaraderie with his colleagues, the drinking, and the appreciation he had for films and writing. I felt completely wrapped up in nostalgia; it enveloped me like a warm hug, and while my childhood was nothing like this, I could appreciate the devotion to a life that allows you to be yourself.

I don't want to divulge too much about the plot, as it is best unwrapped slowly, in your own time, and with your own understanding. I will say that the scene is set strongly with characters trying to figure out who they love and lose during the AIDS epidemic that burned through the country during this time period. Steven's younger self is obsessed with Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac; his devotion is prominently showcased throughout. Mental health is a strong component in the plot of this elegantly written novel, which is always a topic near and dear to my own heart.

It is unquestionable that the writing is refined and imparts a lyrical quality. The plot is slow and meandering, with the narrative style residing firmly in character-driven territory.

I return again to fate. And in Steven's case, he ponders and desires to know—how much of who he has become was meant to be, how much was the genetics of his father, and how much are his own decisions? Within this lies the real essence of this story.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steven is a middle-aged man who is haunted by memories of his father, whom he has not seen or spoken to in forty years. His marriage is troubled, and his career has stalled. This personal crisis prompts Steven to embark on a journey up the California coast to uncover the truth about his father, an English professor disappeared from his and his mother’s life.

The story alternates between Steven's present-day quest and memories of his childhood in 1980s Southern California. Steve drives up the coast seeking out people who knew his father well. Each conversation reveals more clues about his father’s life after he left the family. Steven grapples with how his own troubles mirror his father's patterns. Themes include identity, father-son relationships, mental health, and the impact of abandonment.

The titular “imagined life” works on multiple levels. Ever since his father left, Steven has imagined what happened to him. Once he finds out more from interviewing his father’s associates, his mental image changes. He finds that reality rarely matches what is imagined. The novel is beautifully written in atmospheric prose and contains plenty of cultural references to the 1980s. The narrative tension is provided by the curiosity of what happened to Steven’s father. I very much enjoyed the writing style and found it emotionally moving.

[LLJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, thank you to #NetGalley and to #aaKnopf for the opportunity to read and review "This Imagined Life" by Andrew Porter. Thank you, equally, for introducing me to the writing of this author (I am now going through each of his books, including his highly acclaimed short story collection - The Disappeared - and enjoying them immensely. I love this writer.

This novel is a 5-star without question and I read it in conjunction with his book "In Between Days" which shares some similar themes about family secrets, fatherhood, growing up, forgiveness, and acceptance. I won't go into the plot of the book (that can be read anywhere and I don't want to inadvertently add spoilers) -- but I can say, confidently, that he is one of my favorite new authors and I recommend THIS book wholeheartedly. It will be on shelves on 4/15/2025. I absolutely consumed it and will likely grab the audiobook if and when it comes out. Such a gem!! Thanks to all.

[charisma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for helping me discover a new favorite author.

“The Imagined Life” felt so real and personal that I really thought this was a memoir at one point and had to double check that it was, in fact, a fictional story.

Just to recap, this story is about Steven trying to uncover who his father really is (maybe was?) ever since his father left the family when Steven was 12 years old. He reflects on his own childhood memories and reaches out to those close to his father to try to put everything together, while reflecting on his own relationship with his wife and son.

The way Porter describes Steven’s conflicted and tremulous perspective of his father growing up kept reminding me of my own relationship with my parents, especially my father. Every chapter peeled back a layer of childhood, parenthood, love, and trauma. The pacing never felt dull or rushed. A bittersweet story that hits a bit too close to home, but perhaps one I needed to read.

[Francesco · Rating 5 out of 5]

il protagonista de la vita immaginata steven mills ha commesso degli errori di franzeniana memoria ma alla fine ha corretto (sempre franzen) la sua vita estinguendo (thomas bernard) tutti i fantasmi del suo passato in modo che non possano più nuocerlo ora che in qualche modo si è ricongiunto con moglie e figlio per approdare finalmente nella terra del dolce domani (harper lee)

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Later in The Imagined Life, our narrator, Steven Mills, watches a cryptic film that subverts the conventions of the mystery genre. He asks himself, “Why would someone go to the trouble of making a mystery, only to provide no answer to that mystery in the end?”

Steven’s father, a brilliant scholar, is denied tenure, leading to his vanishing from young Steven’s life. The reasons have always been a mystery to him, one he needs to solve as he replicates his father’s pathology. His father’s disappearance has, for many years, left him “consumed by a kind of quiet rage, a nihilism…” Currently, Steven is living out of his car, estranged from his own wife and young son, remote and unconnected.

His quest to uncover his father’s life and motivations takes him throughout the Golden State, ironically, the state where images are crafted, and dreams are sought. In meeting up with his father’s former colleagues and friends, what emerges is a web of contradictions: his father was “insecure and confident, narcissistic and selfless…easygoing and jovial but shy and withdrawn.” From early in the book, we also know that he was in love with a handsome male colleague in an era that did not view these couplings kindly.

As Steven recalls the life his father left behind – the legendary pool parties and black-and-white films on the backyard projector – he also recognizes that life is never just black and white. It is complex, hazy, layered, and often, unknowable to others. The quest for the missing father morphs into a quest for self as well.

In Andrew Porter’s The Disappeared, one of the most flawless short story collections I’ve ever read, the author explores characters who are in the process of experiencing a loss, a disappearance, a need, a defeat, a metamorphosis from a younger self. Certainly, that theme is present here. Here, Andrew Porter holds readers at a bit more of a detached distance (the words “I remember” are frequently used, which puts readers in the position of listening to a narrative as opposed to twinning with the narrator on his journey. That is a personal preference, but one thing’s for certain: Andrew Porter is a sure-footed and masterful writer whose writing is always very, very good.

[Monica | readingbythebay · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5.

This is the poignant story of a father who, after failing to receive tenure, abandons his wife and son. It’s very “California” and very “summer,” and author @andrew.porter.writer has this soft, elegant writing style — you could almost describe it as gentle monotone — that tricks you into thinking you’re not being affected by the story. And then a tear hits the page and you realize that you’re crying. 💙

I love this author and I loved this novel!

[Gianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

La vita immaginata è un libro che ha qualcosa di magnetico: riesce ad attrarre, a far rimanere sulla pagina, un po’ per la scrittura, un po’ per la struttura che mantiene un velo di mistero, quasi come in un giallo. Andrew Porter solca mari conosciuti, come la crisi del rapporto padre-figlio, delle relazioni famigliari, coniugali e sociali, della malattia e dell’abbandono, e lo fa senza calcare la mano, collocando al centro temi esistenziali di non poco conto: quanto pesa la figura paterna o genitoriale in genere sullo sviluppo e sul futuro di un figlio? Può essere così determinante da apparire come un destino segnato? E la risoluzione della propria vita deve passare per forza dalla conoscenza di questo carico? Ma quanto possiamo conoscere, in fondo, dell’altro, fosse anche una figura così intima come un padre?

”Insicuro e risoluto, narcisista e altruista.
Alla mano e cordiale, secondo una persona, ma timido e riservato secondo un’altra; un compagnone pieno di senso dell’umorismo in un momento e super delicato in un altro. E questo era vero anche sotto altri punti di vista. Adorava mia madre e Deryck; adorava i suoi studenti e me, eppure era diverso con ciascuno di noi, con chi aveva l’opportunità di vedere un suo lato differente, una nuova tessera del puzzle. A chi è toccato in sorte di vedere la parte autentica? Be’, il problema è sempre stato questo.
Per me è stato un mentore straordinario, scriveva uno studente nella sua valutazione, quasi un amico.
E un altro: Senza dubbio è un insegnante che ispira, adesso capisco perché tutti gli vogliono bene, ma certe volte mi chiedo se mi vede, se si rende conto che io sono lì.
Nello scrivere questo speravo che l’immagine di mio padre sarebbe diventata più limpida, ma non è andata così. Anzi, si è appannata, è diventata più sfuggente, i diversi ricordi e aneddoti cozzano l’uno contro l’altro, raccontano verità diverse ma non un’unica verità, e sono tutti inquinati dall’inaffidabilità della memoria.”

Alla fine, ciò che conta non è attribuire delle responsabilità o delle colpe, ma perdonare perché ”non farlo avrebbe significato portare un peso che non se ne sarebbe andato mai.”

[Donald Schopflocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the protagonist, Steven, I have lived with buried anger most of my life, and like Steven its focus was my father who had lived a horrific early life, and never really overcame it. Perhaps that is why this therapeutic confessional with few events beyond those remembered speaks to me so strongly. This is a rich psychological portrait of father and son, and of the therapeutic journey.

[Riva Sciuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Loved this book and will think about it for a long time.

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heartfelt and moving story! I will certainly seek out other work by this author.

[Quill&Queer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man uncovering the layers of his Queer, mentally ill father through the memories of his friends. This was a reflective, emotional story that I'm really glad I took a chance on.