The Imagined Life: A Novel, Andrew Porter, author, Lee Osorio, narrator
Steven Mills is only 11 years old when his life begins to fall apart in the early part of the 1980’s. It is a turbulent time in America, but Steven lives in California, which is often ahead of the times in its lifestyle and acceptance of alternate lifestyles. When the novel begins, Steven describes parties at his house. His father projects movies on an outside wall he has painted white for that purpose. Their pool is filled with revelers happily eating his mom’s specialty dish and drinking to their fill. It is either a picture of debauchery or a picture of playful partiers. The reader will decide that for themselves at the close of the book. His mother is a nurse’s aide at the local hospital, and his father is an English professor at St. Agnes College. Their lifestyle is a bit radical regarding sexual experimentation, drinking and drugs, and Steven is exposed to all of it, but the reader is given to believe that he never quite really understood the meaning of it all. I wondered, was he really that naïve when you consider that he had tried drugs, drink, a bit of alternate sex, and had witnessed his parents’ sometimes raucous parties? Steven’s father is hoping to get tenure at the college’s next meeting. However, Steven’s father is an enigma. He is often described in opposite ways by the people who know him. He is kind or cruel, patient or impatient, angry or placid, joyful or sad. He is a man of two sides, and in the end, how will that two-sided personality alter his life? Will it prevent him from getting tenure? If he does not get tenure, what will the reader think is the reason? The reader will face questions about mental illness, homosexuality and homophobia, fidelity and infidelity in relationships, secrets, jealousy and prejudice. Most questions raised in the novel will remain open-ended, even at the conclusion.
Steven seems to be an isolate. He is shy and has only one real friend. That friend is going through a tough time because his mother is dying of cancer. Together, for a time, the two boys struggle with life’s challenges. As they experimented with temptation, I was surprised not to see them move in any particular direction. Instead, they just seemed to pass through this stage of their life without consequence. This, in essence, sets the stage for the entire book. Everything happens, but even the most desperate events and consequences often seemed inconsequential. Steven is pictured as a sensitive young boy, somewhat naïve, though he dabbles in drugs and alcohol and is exposed to homosexuality. In this way, the novel explores, very subtly, the shame and secrecy those involved in controversial behavior faced at that time. Oddly, the disastrous Aids epidemic was never mentioned, although by the mid to the end of the eighties, the epidemic and cruel treatment of the victims was raging worldwide.
The book explores loneliness or perhaps aloneness, without loneliness, sadness and grief over loss and disappointment, confusion about sexual desire, marriage and relationships regarding sexual identity and fidelity, but most importantly, it explores the life we imagine for ourselves, our hopes and dreams, and it attempts to illustrate our success or failure as we search for it. The reasons for our effort and the results of our striving are examined. Narrow-mindedness, an inability to accept alternate lifestyles, ambition or the lack thereof, family ties, jealousy and mental illness play a major role in the lives of the characters. The book explores how one life event can alter the rest of one’s life in its totality. It explores the need to investigate our reasons for doing things and our emotional needs before we can fully realize our dreams and our hopes. Every decision made promotes a reaction which may last for a lifetime and alter the trajectory of plans made. Often outside influences and people can have disastrous effects on our lives. How we react to whatever comes our way will determine our future, but are our reactions based on what we imagine our future will be, or what it is actually possible to become.
This is a book that quotes the author Proust, cites movies, like L’Aaventura, singers like Stevie Nicks of the Fleetwood Mac, and each of the references relates to the novel’s message. Proust is best remembered for a book about memories and a search for time past. L’Aaventura is a movie that has no solution at the end. The mystery remains unsolved. Stevie Nicks is a well-known talented singer who eventually suffers from addiction. The characters in the novel all seem to be searching for something in a particular time frame, the eighties, when many things were considered unacceptable and remained in the closet. In the end, Steven is troubled by the way his life is turning out. He searches his own memory and his past for answers to questions that plague him. Will the sins of his father be revisited upon him? He sets out on a journey to question his father’s old friends and colleagues. Will he get the answers he wants?
The narrative was sometimes slow and repetitive and also disappointing because I kept waiting for the big reveal, and like the movie L’Aaventura, this book leaves you with no real conclusion or solution, rather it leaves that for you, the reader, to decide, you the reader to determine what you think about how each of the characters will live their lives out, how each of their actions will determine their future, and how unrealistic and cruel some of the behavior is or is not, in the end. Has the assessment of events been realistic or has it been based on what the person imagined it to be? In the end, I felt that hope and redemption for the future, for all, was also offered to the reader, which is probably the greatest gift the novel offered. Would Steven inevitably turn into his father, with all his warts and foibles in the end? Would he escape the worst experiences of his father’s life. Would he realize his own dreams, if his father failed? Would his parents ever realize any of their imagined dreams? How would his life and his family ultimately turn out in the end? Would his father be a part of his life in the future? Could his father have made different choices that would have changed the course of their lives or was their future inevitable? Was his father weak or selfish or was he simply incapable of being anything else because of his mental state? Did some actions push him over the edge and push him into a mental decline?
Most answers to the questions that arose remained open-ended, but in the end, the book offered the possibility to the reader to achieve their own imagined life, or if not, to at least enjoy the life they were living.