Imagine Me Gone
Adam Haslett
Little, Brown and Company
<p>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. She decides to marry him.&nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Imagine Me Gone</b>&nbsp;is the unforgettable story of what unfolds from this act of love and faith. At the heart of it is their eldest son, Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic who makes sense of the world through parody. Over the span of decades, his younger siblings - the savvy and responsible Celia and the ambitious and tightly controlled Alec&nbsp; - struggle along with their mother to care for Michael's increasingly troubled and precarious existence.&nbsp;</p><p>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.&nbsp; With his striking emotional precision and lively, inventive language,&nbsp;<b><i>Adam Haslett</i></b>&nbsp;has given us something rare: a novel with the power to change how we see the most important people in our lives.<br></p><p><i>'In Imagine Me Gone, Haslett focuses tightly on a family tormented by father-and-son battles with chronic depression and anxiety and their attempt, through it all, to answer the question of what constitutes a good, meaningful life. Although by no means a light or easy read, Haslett's new novel forcefully demonstrates that he is unrivalled at capturing the lasting reverberations of suicide and the draining tedium and despair — along with the occasionally fabulous flights of fancy — that accompany intransigent mental illness. And he achieves this with an extraordinary blend of precision, beauty, and tenderness.'</i>&nbsp; &nbsp;-&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Heller McAlpin, NPR</b></p>