Haslett doesn’t oversimplify the challenge of severe mental illness - not just for the people living with it, but for the people living with them, whose lives are also inevitably changed by its presence. That’s partly because I thought it was so well done, artistically and formally, but it’s also because the novel balances its devastating portrayal of depression and anxiety with its persistent faith in basic human kindness and, especially, family love.
In fact, I thought there was something oddly bracing about it. 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.Adam Haslett’s Imagine Me Gone is painful, even tragic, and yet it is also just funny and acerbic enough to keep it (or its readers) from becoming unbearably sad. 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 fianc?, 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. With Imagine Me Gone, Haslett has reached another level." -New York Times Book Reviewįrom 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? "Haslett is one of the country's most talented writers, equipped with a sixth sense for characterization" -Wall Street Journal ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Barnes & Noble, BookPage, BuzzFeed, Elle, Financial Times, Huffington Post, Kirkus, NPR, Refinery29, Seattle Times, Shelf Awareness, WBUR's On Point
TOP 10 NOVELS OF THE YEAR - TIME, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, BBC, Newsday LONG-LISTED for the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER of the LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZEįINALIST for the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
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