Loved this book so much! Definitely in one of my top for the year.

A rather quiet story, mostly occuring between a father and son (Steven), with suspense that builds in the beginning as to why the father left when Steven was 12. We flip flop back and forth from present day when Steven is 50ish? and 1984 when he was 12.

So much mystery and intrigue surrounding the frequent pool parties that were thrown during Steven's childhood, definitely got that LA / old Hollywood type of vibe from it. Strong themes of mental illness and sexuality are prevalent here, as well as multiple characters questioning their importance and self worth. I think it was a perfect balance with the execution of the nonlinear timeline / flashbacks. I was intrigued the entire way!

Will be posting full reviews on social media soon.

The Imagined Life is beautifully written wa haunting story line.A man in search of his father his past.Abook Thats stays with you even after you read the last page.#NetGalley #knopf

The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter is a quiet, reflective story that reads a bit like a memoir. It’s not my usual read, but I enjoyed the journey. Steven is an adult, reflecting on his childhood. Specifically, his relationship with his father and his father’s erratic behavior. We jump between Steven’s present life and his memories as he tracks down his father’s old friends and colleagues in an attempt to fill in the gaps of his father’s life. The childhood flashbacks were nostalgic, with mentions of VCRs, cassette tapes and Fleetwood Mac.

Special thanks to Knopf for the advanced copy via NetGalley.

Steven Mills was twelve years old when his father walked out of his and his mother's life. Now in his 50s and grappling with his own marriage troubles, he has embarked on a road trip to meet his father's relatives and ex-colleagues to ascertain the circumstance that led to the sudden disappearance of his father. The Imagined Life is a deeply reflective novel about the ways past trauma can echo into a life, especially when left unexamined and unrecognized. It’ will resonate with readers drawn to quiet literary fiction, stories about memory, identity, family bonds, and the ripple effects of parental absence. The pacing is slow but I never felt any reading fatigue. Based in 1980's California, the novel aptly portray the themes of suburban life, academic policies and homophobic attitudes. This is a memorable, affecting read.

Thank you Knopf Publishing Group for the ARC

A nearly flawless book, and one I don’t feel equipped to comment on other than to say I’m sad I didn’t read it sooner, I’m sad I haven’t heard more people talking about it, and I was sad when I reached the last page.

Instant favorite with beautiful and haunting prose. Best book I’ve read since Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations.

Andrew Porter is one hell of a storyteller, and I have to believe the reason this book has gone under the radar is related to its queer subject matter. If that’s what people are hung up on, they missed the entire point and have done themselves, and the author, a grave disservice.

Porter's novel follows Steven through two time periods, as a child and as an adult, as he reflects on his relationship with his father who left in his childhood with no further contact. The two time periods are fairly seamless as they effectively tell the same story. I enjoyed how Porter incorporated music and film into Steven's childhood passages, but the adult passages sometimes fell a bit flat. Not only do the lack the emotion that the music and films provide, but many of the conversations Steven has are with former colleagues of his father who he hasn't interacted with in decades - as such, they lack a bit of depth and just provide bits of context about his father. My other issue with the book is that Steven is a narrator who refers to telling you his story - but this pulled me out of the narrative at times - snarky me was thinking, "And you remember which way the wind was blowing and how the sun was shining during all of these childhood moments?!" This was my first read from Porter and I found it interesting but ultimately uneven.

The story was original, interesting, and I was invested in knowing what happened in the end. Learning about the protagonist and his family kept me moving forward, but I was slightly disappointed in the ending.

Very interesting story on family.How to g C o p e with the father's problems. It was a young boy when they left Philadelphia to go out to Los Angeles.So his father To teach At the College. I The family had pool parties.
With his father's friends from the college. The father had problems with temper. You also fell in love with a man and left the family for a while. Steve also had problems with this as well. With a best friend CHA. U. It was interesting how Author time all this together. We went back-and-forth and found.Explain how the story was told. Steve was raised by his mother, but he had trouble with his family as well. So he went on a quest to find out more about his father and Why he disappeared. Father did not get tenure at this college and this was like a downfall for him. When Steve was older he went to talk to us. Father's old teachers to find out what really happened. He also reconnected with the father's brother who helped him out in the past and they had a really long discussion. The ending We'll be a surprise for you

4.5 / 5 - Thank you NetGalley for introducing me to a new favorite author of mine. I love everything about this book. The cover is PERFECT - it completely portrays the story in every detail (relaxed yet stormy, fun but empty, luxurious yet hallow). The synopsis was enticing and that’s usually all I need to be excited about a book but once I dove in I knew I’d be hooked. Andrew Porter is an amazing author. Every sentence is so beautifully written and purposeful.

I have since picked up a few of his other publications and get the sense that they all touch on the same subjects and themes which is not uncommon, I suppose. However, I would love to see him venture out into other areas.

This is a quietly poignant story of Steven, a man in his 50s who finds himself lost. He's lost his job and is estranged from his wife and son due to his inability to reconcile his father's abandonment. Told in a series of flashbacks to the 1980s and current day, we follow Steven as his world is upended and he struggles with both inner and outer demons.
The writing is lyrical and the characters are sympathetic. I found myself tearing up a time or too as young Steven tries and ultimately fails to keep his family together.

The Imagined Life was a super interesting read. I loved the character study and the writing felt propulsive. I'd read more from the author.

I really enjoyed this. This is a story told by a man whose marriage and relationship to his son are fracturing, He embarks on a trip to investigate his relationship to his own father, who disappeared when he was twelve. He learns more and more about his father, and his mother through friends of his father along the way. Do you really know who your parents are as people?

Thank you Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

4.5 stars

This story felt so lived in an real. The setting both dream like and realistic, in the way that memoies often are. Bittersweet and atmospheric. I wanted the story to keep going, to pull further at the unraveling threads. I really enjoyed this read.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor!

Not gonna lie, I’ve been in a reading SLUMP. So this book took me longer than normal to get through. But it was a solid 4/5. The Imagined Life takes is on an emotional journey of losing someone close to us. Not as a result of death, but as a result of choices made in life.
It goes to show that the life we live isn’t always the life we imagined, and to take each day as it comes with hopes that it does.

Thank you to @netgalley and the publisher for a copy in exhange for my honest review.

#theimaginedlife #bookstagram #booksonaburger

A compellingly readable novel about a son’s quest to understand his father, his parents’ relationship, and himself. It is also a multi-layered story of how mental illness in a family is like a pebble tossed into a pond.: The resulting ripples just keep expanding.
Andrew Porter is exceptionally adept at creating believable depth in his characters with precise and insightful observations of their behavior and meaningful dialog. He does not waste words or time yet fills the pages with deep emotion and elegantly designed portrayals of time and place. Set throughout California he takes the reader on a journey through Steven’s life and the varying cultures of the Golden State. Highly recommended.

"The Imagined Life" is what we have - at best, when we think back on what our parents were like, and what their lives were like. We can never know our parents as other people - not even thinking of the generation gap, there's the sheer fact that they have their lives, and then had us. Many of us go through lives, filling in those gaps in realization with vignettes - some real and some imaginary. There's just no way we can fathom their lives, no matter what impact their lives have had on us or our lives.

The novel's protagonist, Steven, is struggling to come to terms to what his father must have gone through, at a momentous point in his life. Steven is just twelve at that time, but carries indelible memories from the time - memories of late night parties, of breathless and breathtaking time spent with his then-best friend Chau, of tender but only-ever-half-understood time spent along with his mother while father was elsewhere. Decades have passed since, but something in Steven's mind and psyche won't let him go of the past, without at least trying to decipher what those cryptic times and words and recollections amounted to, and what actually happened to his father, and why.

He doesn't have his father to talk to, his mother too has since passed away, and so he must retrace his steps from that time, like a devotee follower revisiting the steps of his idol, hoping that somehow doing that will make him see the light of the day, and reveal to him some grand truths, that will make sense of what can otherwise perhaps charitably be described as jagged pieces. It's a bit like assembling the broken pieces of a mirror, in the hope of reconstructing the image that was seen in it. Of course, that's impossible, and perhaps Steven knows it too. Like a true pilgrim then, he aims to go through the steps, and have faith that his efforts will either get him answers or make the questions fade away into irrelevance.

There is some lyrical and expressive writing here, that time and again - at least for me - felt reminiscent of "The Wonder Years". There are innumerable sections and descriptions, that begin with the words "I remember...". By the end, it veers towards being tiresome but thankfully never really gets there. Memories of one's childhood are always like looking through frosted glass - never clear, but always prettier than they perhaps would have been. So it is here as well. He looks back fondly on time spent with his father, time that on hindsight seems and looks even to us as woefully too little. Instead, he goes through times with his mother many times just complaining or talking about times with his father, not realizing until much later in his life how cruel and inconsiderate he had been with her all that time. Granted he wasn't there, but she was - all the way. But of course, what child appreciates what he has and stops asking for what he doesn't and can't have.

By the end, however, when the book gently seems to be steering towards a closure of sorts, a description of a particular movie Stephen went to the theater to see with his father comes surprisingly close to describing how his pilgrimage is perhaps going to turn out to be.

"Years later, I'd learn about subverting the conventions of the mystery genre, of circumventing tropes, but at the time it just seemed bizarre to me, bizarre to me and sad. 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."

And yet, that's what he finds happening of his efforts. Try as he might, while he has been finding pieces, the picture is clearly not complete, and perhaps never will be.

Another time, describing a particular house he recalls he went to once, he says:

"The house we went to that day has only ever existed to me in dreams. I know now that it was a real place, a real place that existed in 1984, but I have never been able to find it again. Even in high school, when I used to drive around the winding hills of Hollywood, looking for familiar landmarks, houses or street signs that might seem recognizable, that might jog my memory, I never found it. I'd end up circling around and around for hours, but never with any luck. Later, I'd try to retrace my steps and realize I was lost."

Ultimately, in the best of storytelling traditions, he is lost, and he is found. He finds his Dad, only to realize that one of the main reasons it took so long to find him and find the truth about him was that he, Steve, never really tried.

Melancholy is the most prominent underlying theme here, and that alone is worth the effort of reading this.

Thanks to NetGalley, Knopf and the author, for an eARC of the book.

I enjoyed this book. As the description says it’s elegiac and for me it read quite quickly. It had that sort of summer malaise feeling which I enjoyed as well as the introspection but it wasn’t like jaw-dropping writing. Would recommend

I received an advanced reader copy (ARC) of The Imagined Life in exchange for an honest review on my Goodreads page.

The Imagined Life tells the story of Steven Mills’ search for his estranged father, who vanished from his family se 40 years ago. The narrative unfolds in an engaging back-and-forth style, blending the present-day journey with flashbacks to the past. What truly stood out to me was how the novel also serves as a love letter to California and the vibrant culture of the 1980s. For anyone who holds a deep sense of nostalgia for that era, this book will be a treasure.

The writing is evocative, with beautifully crafted passages that touch on universal themes—family dynamics, the complexity of father-son relationships, the pain of failure, and the enduring hope for the future.

If you’re a fan of richly woven stories that evoke both personal introspection and nostalgic delight, I highly recommend picking it up when it’s released on April 15th!

This was such an interesting and layered read. The writing really pulled me in, and I loved how it explored identity and memory in a unique way. There were a few spots where I wished things moved faster, but overall, it was a thoughtful story that stuck with me after I finished. A great choice if you’re in the mood for something a bit different!

A man, who's in the middle of his own existential crisis, goes on a quest to find out what happened to his father, who disappeared from his life when he was eleven years old.
This was told in two timelines: flashbacks to the summer of the disappearance, and the present when he's asking old friends and relatives about his dad. Both timelines were boring.
Thanks to #netgalley and #knopf for this #arc of #theimaginedlife in exchange for an honest review.