A captivating book about the emotional and literary power of the lives we might have lived had our chances or choices been different.

We each live one life, formed by paths taken and untaken. Choosing a job, getting married, deciding on a place to live or whether to have children—every decision precludes another. But what if you’d gone the other way? It can be a seductive thought, even a haunting one.

Andrew H. Miller illuminates this theme of modern culture: the allure of the alternate self. From Robert Frost to Sharon Olds, Virginia Woolf to Ian McEwan, Jane Hirshfield to Carl Dennis, storytellers of every stripe write of the lives we didn’t have. What forces encourage us to think this way about ourselves, and to identify with fictional and poetic voices speaking from the shadows of what might have been? Not only poets and novelists, but psychologists and philosophers have much to say on this question. Miller finds wisdom in all these sources, revealing the beauty, the power, and the struggle of our unled lives.

In an elegant and provocative rumination, he lingers with other selves, listening to what they say. Peering down the path not taken can be frightening, but it has its rewards. On Not Being Someone Else offers the balm that when we confront our imaginary selves, we discover who we are.

"An expertly curated tour of regret and envy in literature…By approaching regret and envy from multiple angles, Miller’s insightful and moving book—both in his own discussion and in the tales he recounts—gently nudges us toward consolation. Yes, we might live only one among countless possible lives, and those we haven’t lived will haunt us. But, as Miller notes in conclusion, at least we have had the chance to live the one life that has been given to us." - Wall Street Journal

"Counts the ways in which narratives of unlived lives can examine or come to terms with the present…Miller believes, in short, that stories of unled lives make real life livelier…[A] capacious book." - Times Literary Supplement

"A compendium of expressions of wonder over what might have been…We have unled lives for all sorts of reasons: because we make choices; because society constrains us; because events force our hands; most of all, because we are singular individuals, becoming more so with time…Swept up in our real lives, we quickly forget about the unreal ones. Still, there will be moments when, for good or ill, we feel confronted by our unrealized possibilities." - New Yorker

"I wish I had written this book—a wish that is surely the best response to reading it… Cosmic metaphysical speculation is combined with, and conveyed through, meticulous analysis of pictures, poems, novels and films…Examining art’s capacity to transfix, multiply, and compress, this book is itself a work of art." - Times Higher Education

"Excellent…For Miller, imagining who we might have been or once were, or who we might yet become, is anything but frivolous…In spirited and incisive close readings of texts like Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken,’ Carl Dennis’s ‘The God Who Loves You,’ and Ian McEwan’s Atonement (among many, many others), Miller pursues this slippery, elusive meaning and the many questions it leaves unanswered…The idea of unled lives could hardly be more resonant…How many literary scholars today write so engagingly?" - Commonweal

"Shows that the idea of lives unled is stitched into works of art across genres and across centuries, making clear that the stories we tell are often rooted in considering alternatives to the choices we’ve made." - PopMatters

"A book of admirable insight and sensitivity…Throughout this quiet, engrossing book, Miller aptly reveals the uncanny mesmerism of the unlived life, of the untaken road—our very modern preoccupation with who we are not…This is a text fresh and alive with the power and mystery of art, steeped in feeling, and, like life itself, resplendent with possibilities as yet unrealized, with knowledge not yet known." - Philosophy Now

"Wonderfully lucid about murky questions of what might have been…Both literature specialists, who will appreciate Miller’s breadth of examples, and general readers, who can enjoy the universal topics he explores, will find much food for thought in this pleasant work." - Publishers Weekly

"A strong, pleasing work that is as much about living as about reading and writing." - Kirkus Reviews

"Fascinating." - The Times

"A thoughtful, generous, amusing, tender, meandering, self-deprecating, wistful, even reverent style of thinking about our lives in relation to the stories we read." - Public Books

"Blend[s] literary criticism and personal essay into a beguiling hybrid…Will remain widely compelling for a long time to come, not only because of [its] many discrete merits, but because of [its] readership’s new intimacy with the ‘unled lives’ of lockdown and quarantine." - Journal of Victorian Culture

"Deeply reflective and at the same time uncommonly readable…Although no book of literary criticism can be accused of being a page turner, On Not Being Someone Else comes close." - Choice

"[A] marvelous, melancholic, middle-aged meditation on the meaning of lives unled…Miller is a profoundly gifted close reader—someone whose company one would like to keep, and return to again and again." - Victorian Studies