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The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter
A surprising and tender mid-life crisis.
But, as it was, these stories, like so many other things about my father, became embedded in my psyche as a kind of parallel narrative of my life, a fictionalized version in which my father was the campus pariah and I, by association, his son, destined to inherit his shortcomings and flaws. For a long time this fictionalized version of my father’s life held such a heavy place in my mind that it almost felt like a prophecy of sorts, an inescapable fate, and it’s only now, forty years later, that I can say with some degree of certainty that almost none of it was true
Steven’s story is common. He’s middle-aged, drinking too much, drifting from his wife and son. He’s conscious of how well his life rhymes with his father’s. When he was eleven his dad began pulling away, acting erratically, and finally disappeared. Forty years later the mystery smolders.
The Imagined Life alternates between present day and flashbacks to his youth which show a troubled father losing his grasp on reality and a mother trying to hold her family together. Porter avoids cliche by giving Steven self-awareness and a surprising capacity to adapt. The father and mother are well drawn characters rich with flaws. Even Steven’s wife, who exists mostly in the background, is well developed.
The book is eerily authentic. Life on the page reflects the physical world in complexity and beauty, and is occastionally unknowable.
Geographical link: California, USA | Publisher: KNOPF | Published: 2025
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