When Margaret’s fiancé, 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. Imagine Me Gone 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, and the story of how, over the span of decades, his younger siblings—the savvy and responsible Celia, and the ambitious and tightly controlled Alec—struggle with their mother to care for Michael’s increasingly troubled and precarious existence.
With his striking emotional precision and lively, inventive language, Adam Haslett has given us something rare: a novel with the power to change how you see the most important people in your life.