The Imagined Life

“A poignant, achingly beautiful story of human love, and the lengths we’ll go to for those we care for.” —The Irish Times

“A fascinating portrait. . . . Like Richard 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.” —Rand Richards Cooper, The New York Times Book Review

“Cathartic. . . . Porter deftly combines a bildungsroman with the story of a midlife crisis.” —The New Yorker

“Compulsively readable.” —The Times Literary Supplement (U.K.)

“Andrew Porter has quietly become one of the United States’ most reliably great fiction writers. . . . Porter evokes both 1980s and contemporary California perfectly and writes with a psychological insight that calls to mind John Cheever and Richard Yates. He’s that good.” —NPR

“Poignant. . . . The Imagined Life toggles between description—of Steven’s trip up the California coast—and evocative, fine-grained recollections of Steven’s preadolescent life. . . . Porter’s conjuring of al fresco backyard faculty parties fairly gleams.” —Wall Street Journal

“An incisive, evocative new novel. . . . Prepare to be moved time and again.” —The Anniston Star

“A deeply engaging, psychological drama, a profound exploration of what drives people to make the decisions they do.” —Rain Taxi

“Astute about masculinity, shame, and the ways heterosexual matrimony can constrain both wives and husbands.” —Vulture

“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.” —Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe

“The immaculate beach vibes of Andrew Porter’s latest novel make it a perfect summer read. . . . Porter’s atmospheric prose, pacing, human insight, and compassion forged a novel I couldn’t put down.” —Esquire

“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.” —Manuel Muñoz, author of The Consequences

“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.” —Jai Chakrabarti, author of A Play for the End of the World

“A gorgeous, glow-in-the-dark novel, and the best book yet, from an unflinching, uncompromising writer of the highest order. A paean to the ‘unreliability of memory,’ the lives we imagine for one another, and the impossibility of ever really knowing those we love and those who love us most.” —David James Poissant, author of Lake Life and The Heaven of Animals

“Packed with so much summer you can smell the chlorine of backyard pools and feel the sunscreen clinging to your skin.” —Good Morning America (“Ultimate Summer Reading List”)

“The Imagined Life is haunting and intimate, Andrew Porter’s prose a master class in restraint and nuance and surprise. There are a handful of writers whose every book I will read, and Andrew Porter—because he writes novels like this—is one of them.” —Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade

“Mesmerizing. . . . The Imagined Life has the heft and lingering aftereffect of a classic. Like James Salter’s Light Years or John William’s Stoner, it is sustained by the near perfect prose and psychological insight.” —Image Journal

“A beautiful novel about nostalgia and the impossibility of really knowing the people who brought us into the world.” —Vanity Fair (Italy)

“Such an alluring novel, with echoes of The Goldfinch. I was completely absorbed by The Imagined Life.” —Roxy Dunn, author of As Young As This

“A fever dream of a novel, the past a faded, flickering film reel of Hockney swimming pools, bleached skies and febrile Californian dusks where secrets and desires can only be half-glimpsed behind closed doors.” —Karen Powell, author of Fifteen Wild Decembers and The River Within

“Porter’s art is in showing how absence can be the engine to imagine, and how paradoxically, it is precisely through even the misunderstandings that identity is built.” —Maire Claire (Italy)

“In measured and elegant prose, Porter gently unravels one family’s life amidst the vindictive world of literary academia. Ambition and betrayal are beautifully counterpointed by sun-drenched Californian pool parties and a languid soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac and Frank Sinatra. Like the best of Richard Ford, this is a tender, melancholy book to savour.”—Victoria Mackenzie, author of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain

“Steeped in beautiful melancholy, The Imagined Life is a plangent, sensual meditation on forgiveness, written with finger-tip sensitivity. Boldly tender and calmly powerful, a novel to disappear into.” ―Jenny Mustard, author of Okay Days

“Psychologically intricate and briskly paced.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A sensitive and insightful novel . . . Impressively moving.” —Shelf Awareness

“Master prose stylist Porter expertly evokes the heady atmosphere of Steven’s memories while sharply rendering the costs of the ‘imagined life’ that Steven has clung to ever since.” —Booklist

“Porter is one of the strongest voices in American fiction for the new millennium. . . . In line with Yates and Cheever [and] Franzen’s Corrections.”—il manifesto (Italy)

“Atmospheric, kaleidoscopic, and cinematic, Andrew Porter’s The Imagined Life captures the ineffable quality of childhood memory with startling precision. Told in sparse yet dreamlike prose, and set against the alluring tapestry of 1980s academia—alive with intellect, ambition, and unspoken tensions—this soul-stirring novel reveals how childhood wounds linger beneath the surface of adulthood, shaping who we are long after we’ve forgotten why.” —Lidija Hilje, author of Slanting Towards the Sea

“Stylish, nostalgic, and quietly devastating, The Imagined Life is a haunting meditation on memory, inheritance, and the fragile architectures of family.” —Saleem Haddad, author of Guapa

“A deeply affecting and atmospheric novel.” —Buzz Magazine (U.K.)

“A lyrical and dreamy road novel.” —La Repubblica (Italy)

“Beautiful. . . . with echoes of Brett Easton Ellis [and] Richard Yates.” —il Riformista (Italy)

“A coming-of-age journey with growth at every turn, inspiring reflection not only in the protagonist but also in the reader.” —Grazia (Italy)

“Tense and propulsive. . . . Porter masterfully weaves the present-day interviews with vivid recollections from Steven’s childhood, scenes thick with tension, wonder, and the kind of unanswered questions that lodge deep in a young person’s psyche. . . . The novel becomes not just a story of loss, but a meditation on legacy, identity, and the strange fictions we build around the people we love.” —Benicia Magazine