Our Imaginary Childhood (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798888381861)

Our Imaginary Childhood, Sara Watson's vivid new chapbook, takes on the task of narrating childhood through the offbeat, precocious voices of eleven siblings growing up helter-skelter. The mother and father drink and "spend whole days in bed." "They love us, but they have headaches," the unnamed central narrator says, and later adds, "Every family needs a storyteller, otherwise the family is a secret." The slow reveal of this family' secret pries open the brief, compact form of the chapbook. The ending of OUR IMAGINARY CHILDHOOD is worthy of a novella. This is a very poignant and intelligent debut.-Lynn Emanuel


The magic of Sara Watson's Our Imaginary Childhood collects in coffee cans, dirty spoons, crows' nests, and graveyards. This is a family ghost story where the ghosts are alive, playing house or playing dead in a home filled with love and haunted by alcoholism. But in the mailbox or under a rock or beneath a tree there is always a secret password, a key to the kingdom of hazy orange kid dreams. Each of these prose poems is a tiny wonder.-Rochelle Hurt

Author: Sara Watson
ISBN-10: 8888381864
ISBN-13: 9798888381861
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
Language: English
Published: 03/31/2023
Pages: 36
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.13lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.09d