The rest of the book unfolds in decades and includes the perspectives of their children: troubled and frenetic Michael, who obsesses over music and racial justice, resolute middle-child Celia, who serves as the rational backbone of the family, and attention-seeking Alec, whose flair for drama hides a love that Margaret deems the most simple and unquestioning of the three. Haslett's novel follows a five-member family that begins with Margaret and John, who marry each other in 1960s London even after Margaret learns of John's secret, devastating depression. Adam Haslett confronts the tough questions that come with loving someone in pain: how much do you try to save someone before you have to let them save themselves? How do you act with compassion when it feels like everyone needs more than you had to begin with? Where do you draw the line between wanting someone to live for your own sake instead of their own? These questions and more rang through my mind as I finished this book, along with gratitude that Haslett crafted such a somber, moving story of a damaged family forever in the process of healing.Īpproach this book if you can stomach sadness avoid it if you search only for happiness in your stories. With his striking emotional precision and lively, inventive language, Adam Haslett has given us something rare: a novel with the power to change how we see the most important people in our lives.Īs someone who has dealt with mental illness in his family, I found Imagine Me Gone so honest and redemptive. Told in alternating points of view by all five members of the family, this searing, gut-wrenching, and yet frequently hilarious novel brings alive with remarkable depth and poignancy the love of a mother for her children, the often inescapable devotion siblings feel toward one another, and the legacy of a father's pain in the life of a family.

Over the span of decades, his younger siblings - the savvy and responsible Celia and the ambitious and tightly controlled Alec - struggle along with their mother to care for Michael's increasingly troubled and precarious existence. At the heart of it is their eldest son, Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic who makes sense of the world through parody. Imagine Me Gone is the unforgettable story of what unfolds from this act of love and faith. When Margaret's fiancée, John, is hospitalized for depression in 1960s London, she faces a choice: carry on with their plans despite what she now knows of his condition, or back away from the suffering it may bring her. From a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, a ferociously intimate story of a family facing the ultimate question: how far will we go to save the people we love the most?

Imagine me gone by adam haslett