The Imagined Life

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 recognize, 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 in the 1980s—and masterfully weaves a tale of trauma, generational secrets, forbidden love, and shame.

"Such an alluring novel, with echoes of The Goldfinch. I was completely absorbed."

"Foremost among Porter's 20th-century forebears might be Richard Yates. Like Yates, Porter writes in a style that is lucid and unadorned... He is less caustic than Yates, and more forgiving; generosity, rather than contempt, is the animating impulse."

"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 Imagined Life moves in both directions, foraying precariously into the future even as it looks back in perplexity, and seeking understanding even as it attempts to salvage love." 

"The Imagined Life toggles between description and evocative, fine-grained recollections."

"Elegiac, poignant."

"Impressively moving... Andrew Porter confronts with sensitivity and insight [the question] Is it ever possible for us to truly know our parents?"

“With its quiet confidence and elegant precision, The Imagined Life is a masterpiece of memory, music, and longing. Andrew Porter is one of our finest prose stylists, and everything he’s turned his attention to here—a troubled adult son struggling to understand his troubled father; the slow disintegration of an American family; a boy coming of age amidst the wine and weed of California in the early ‘80s—shimmers into pure gold.”

“The Imagined Life delves into the space between the people we love and who we wish them to be. With unsentimental precision, Andrew Porter examines the flawed relationship between a father and son, approaching it with the grace of a true literary master.”

“The Imagined Life is a wise and elegant novel. Andrew Porter bestows so much grace on the confusion of growing up and the relatable anguish of looking back and recognizing our parents as people—true people—who struggle just as mightily with sorrow and love.”

Andrew Porter is the author of the story collections The Disappeared and The Theory of Light and Matter, as well as the novel In Between Days. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received a Pushcart Prize, a James Michener/ Copernicus Fellowship, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His work has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Narrative, and The Southern Review, and his story 'Angelo' has been selected by Celeste Ng to appear in 2025's Best American Short Stories. He teaches fiction writing and directs the creative writing program at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

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