When the novel The Imagined Life opens, Steven Mills is recalling something that happened when he was an adolescent.
On the surface, it was something fairly mundane. Steven witnesses his parents—and their behavior isn’t that unexpected or unusual. They are drinking by the pool with their friends. They jump in the pool. Music plays. Classic movies are projected on a screen. The partygoers are loud and seem to be enjoying themselves.
But then one day, Steven sees something through the window of his room. It's another day of grown-ups partying by the pool. Down below —outside the window—Steven is aware that something has gone very wrong.
Soon after this event, Steven’s father seems to have changed. His mother is looking and acting different, too. She is tired, depleted. She even seems something close to hopeless.
But the thing is, Steven’s father had always been given to low moods, shifts in mood.
He was a college professor, and while he was by all accounts charismatic and brilliant, the path to tenure in this profession is not without its tensions and troubles. But there is something else going on.
What is happening to Steven’s father?
Why does he change?
Why does he end up leaving the family?
And then—what about Steven? He is just an adolescent boy trying to understand his parents, especially his father—his mercurial moods and his disconnection. And also—his disappearance.
Steven’s life is influenced by these absences. As an adult, he decides he will go on a self-imposed odyssey to find out what happened to his father.
Will he be able to come to terms with what he finds out?
Andrew Porter is the author of The Imagined Life.
You can learn more about the author here.
