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A taut, elegiac, and engrossing read, The Imagined Life follows Steven Mills, a man in a struggling marriage who becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about the father who vanished from his life when he was only twelve.
Driving up the coast of California, Steven seeks out his father's friends, family, and former colleagues, and is transported back to his 1980s childhood: his parents' legendary pool parties, black-and-white films on the backyard projector, his father's male friends in the cabana house… With every revelation his father becomes more difficult to recognise, and, with every insight, Steven must confront truths about his own life.
In cinematic prose, Andrew Porter explores the full nexus of male relationships: fathers and sons, husbands and lovers-set achingly against the US AIDS epidemic and the homophobia of the 1980s-and masterfully weaves a tale of trauma, generational secrets, forbidden love, and shame.
Driving up the coast of California, Steven seeks out his father's friends, family, and former colleagues, and is transported back to his 1980s childhood: his parents' legendary pool parties, black-and-white films on the backyard projector, his father's male friends in the cabana house… With every revelation his father becomes more difficult to recognise, and, with every insight, Steven must confront truths about his own life.
In cinematic prose, Andrew Porter explores the full nexus of male relationships: fathers and sons, husbands and lovers-set achingly against the US AIDS epidemic and the homophobia of the 1980s-and masterfully weaves a tale of trauma, generational secrets, forbidden love, and shame.
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Reviews
" The Imagined Life is many things: a deft exploration of male relationships, a mediation on how much we inherit from those who raise us, a study of shame set across the AIDS epidemic, but above all, it's a poignant, achingly beautiful story of human love, and the lengths we'll go to for those we care for."
Irish Times
"Porter's skills are once again on clear display in this novel- its use of telling detail, its effective economy of repetition, its fruitful ambiguity. The Imagined Life is compulsively readable... its owners can look forward to its vein of attenuated nostalgia and cautious hope."
TLS
"Such an alluring novel, with echoes of The Goldfinch . I was completely absorbed."
Roxy Dunn, author of As Young As This
" The Imagined Life [is] endowed with sympathy and propelled by the mystery behind the Mills family's undoing. You want to find out what happens."
The New York Times Book Review
"A deeply affecting and atmospheric novel, The Imagined Life will linger long in the memory."
Buzz Magazine