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Irish Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter: an achingly beautiful story of human love
The Imagined Life Author : Andrew Porter ISBN-13 : 9781787705906 Publisher : Europa Editions Guideline Price : £ 16.99 'Vertiginous, alcohol-soaked evenings in the backyard of our house, the black-and-white flicker of my father's makeshift theater, the verdant splendor of my mother's garden, the flowing laughter of their guests.' This is the hazy Californian backdrop of Andrew Porter's The Imagined Life, which tells the story of a man stuck between the frames of his own life, past and present, determined to carry out an investigation into finding the father who disappeared from his life when he was 12. Porter's writing is infused with nostalgia – a yearning for childhood, and for lost innocence. This nostalgia is artfully crafted by setting; The Imagined Life takes place across a surreal landscape, resplendent with cloudless skies and palm trees, soundtracked by Fleetwood Mac and Frank Sinatra. Our narrator, Steven, has a dreamlike childhood; he gazes out of his bedroom window to watch his young, beautiful parents throw pool parties for their closest friends, before settling down to watch black and white movies. But one party sticks in Steven's mind – the gathering where he witnesses the moment that changes his father forever. READ MORE Steven and his father's relationship is complicated; it's mired in idolatry, derailed by an act of betrayal that's almost unforgivable. Through Steven's narration, we learn of his anger towards his father – yet also his grief for him, for his failures, and for the possibility that he might be hurtling towards a similar fate. The question of whether we're doomed to repeat our parents' mistakes is raised several times; as a child, Steven has a blurred, desirous relationship with his best friend Chau, and it's only long after the two have parted ways that Steven is able to admit his true feelings. His desperation to hide his desires has the potential to lead to a downfall like his father's, and his eventual escape from this is entirely down to an acceptance of them both, flaws and all. 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.
New York Times
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Book Review: ‘The Imagined Life,' by Andrew Porter
THE IMAGINED LIFE, by Andrew Porter Andrew Porter's fiction abounds in first-person commentaries, intimate and confiding, by male narrators unafraid to reflect poorly on themselves. Failure is their preoccupation — in career, in marriage — and ambivalence their default mind-set. These are men uncertain about what they want, and prone to an intelligent, rueful lostness. 'Once in a while I'd have a feeling that I was missing out on something or being left behind,' says one, 'but usually that feeling would pass.' Porter's new novel, 'The Imagined Life,' follows Steven Mills, a writer and teacher chasing the mystery of his father, who vanished in 1984 when Steven was 12. A brilliant but unstable English professor, the father — whose name we never learn — had a breakdown after being denied tenure at a liberal-arts college in Southern California, and soon thereafter abandoned his family. The novel alternates between Steve's recollections of that troubled year and present-day sections in which he drives the California coast to interview colleagues, friends and relatives of his long-lost father. Having recently quit his job and separated from his wife and son, Steve worries that he's repeating the failures of his errant father; his 'biggest fear in life,' he confesses, is that he will 'inherit his affliction, his curse.' In deep dives into the past, Steve retrieves a fascinating portrait of his father, a charismatic, mercurial man who dreamily quotes Proust in French but also rants with paranoid vehemence about colleagues conspiring to traduce him. Alternately melancholy and manic, and incorrigibly brainy, he's an awkward parent; his idea of having fun with his 11-year-old son is to watch a Werner Herzog film together. As his professional and marital crises deepen, he exiles himself to the backyard pool cabana — 'my father's private sanctuary,' Steve recalls, 'his cave' — emerging to host boozy, pot-smoking parties as Steve watches from the house. 'The Imagined Life' investigates a settled domestic unhappiness that verges into despair, capturing the poignancy of a boy alone in his room, listening to his mother's muffled sobs in the next room, not quite drowned out by 'The Tonight Show.' This is a novel of absence — not just of the father but also of a functioning present (we learn next to nothing about the adult Steve's career or friends). And, finally, an absence of self. 'I'd never had that kind of purpose,' Steve ruminates, comparing himself with a driven, successful uncle. 'I'd always felt like I was hiding in a bunker … like I'd been hollowed out.' American writing abounds in narratives of the problematic or absent father, and the terrain of Porter's novel has been mapped by such classics of family dysfunction as Frank Conroy's 'Stop-Time' and Geoffrey Wolff's 'The Duke of Deception.' I also think of the narrator of Delmore Schwartz's story 'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities' imagining his parents' courtship and wanting to scream, Don't! Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
