Imagine Your Life Like This

by Sarah Layden

The characters who inhabit Sarah Layden's short story collection are on the verge of change—if only they could see themselves and their situations with greater clarity. Caught in the midst of crises, they stumble toward the future without fully understanding their past. Layden’s deft, spare prose sketches worlds and lives with telling details, juggling disparate strands of identity and often revealing the deeper truths in unexpected moments of epiphany.



A bride-to-be puts on her detective hat when her groom goes missing. A woman returns to college after escaping an abusive marriage, only to discover her professor is a fraud. Reunited at a high school reunion, two former classmates completely misinterpret a critical incident from a decade prior. These and other characters find themselves lonely and in limbo, their self-identity as blurry as the old photographs they cling to with stubborn intensity.



Set mostly in the Midwest and upstate New York, Imagine Your Life Like This captures everyday Americans in all their discontent, misunderstandings, and dogged determination for a better world.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

168 pages, Paperback

Published April 11, 2023

About the author

Twitter: @BySarahLayden

Reviews

[P.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a solid collection of short stories. The characters and their circumstances are relatable, especially to a Gen Xer/early Millennial. Many of the stories come to a close at surprising points, to the frustration of those who prefer narratives that achieve complete closure. I found this to be a refreshing choice. The style challenges the reader and invites him or her to reflect on the challenges and contradictions that the characters must navigate. Rather that working through the book as quickly as possible, I took a more a leisurely journey, reading one story per night, as if it were starting point for meditation.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarah Layden's collection of short stories is incredibly moving and was a delight to read. I loved all of them, but I think "In Search Of" was my favorite, about a man in his late 20s who is still in the process of growing up when he begins to see his coworker in a different light. Sarah's prose is gorgeous, and the richly drawn, detailed worlds of these stories make the events that transpire truly feel like something that might have happened to you, someone in your family, your neighbor. Highly recommend.