Imagine Me Gone

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? When Margaret's fiance, 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. 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. 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. 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. "

About the Author :
Adam Haslett is the author of the short story collection "You Are Not a Stranger Here," which was a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, and the novel "Union Atlantic," winner of the Lambda Literary Award and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. His books have been translated into eighteen languages, and he has received the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, the PEN/Malamud Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. He lives in New York City.

Review :
""Imagine Me Gone" is beautiful, it's terrifying, it's intimate and epic, and it's devastating -- one of the great books about loss and mourning and the ineluctable laws that govern the political economy of families. I cannot describe the force or the depth of its accomplishment except to say that this magnificent work of art has overwhelmed me and broken my heart." Tony Kushner, "Pulitzer Prize winner for Angels in America"" "The family Adam Haslett has created in "Imagine Me Gone" feels as true and as complex as our own actual families are, and lays nearly as deep a claim upon our love and loyalty. The eldest son, Michael, is simply one of the finest characters I've ever come across in fiction. This beautiful, tragic novel will haunt you for the rest of your life and you will be all the more human for it." Paul Harding, "Pulitzer Prize winner for Tinkers"" "This novel about family, love, forgotten music, and a despair that proves unbearable has one of the most harrowing and sustained descriptions of a mind in obsessive turmoil and disrepair that I've ever read. Haslett is a marvelously lucid and intelligent writer." Joy Williams, "Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Quick and the Dead"" "This touching chronicle of love and pain traces half a century in a family of five, from the parents' engagement in 1963 through a father's and son's psychological torments and a final crisis....Each chapter is told by one of the family's five voices, shifting the point of view on shared troubles, showing how they grow away from one another without losing touch....Haslett shapes these characters with such sympathy, detail, and skill that reading about them is akin to living among them....As vivid and moving as the novel is, it's not because Haslett strives to surprise but because he's so mindful and expressive of how much precious life there is in both normalcy and anguish." "Kirkus (Starred Review)"" ""Imagine Me Gone "is literature of the highest order. It manages to be both dreadfully sad and hilariously funny all at once. It is luminous with love." Peter Carey, "Man Booker Prize winner for True History of the Kelly Gang"" "Adam Haslett's second novel is about family, love, forgotten music, and a despair that proves unbearable, and has one of the most harrowing and sustained descriptions of a mind in obsessive turmoil and disrepair that I've ever read. Haslett is a marvelously lucid and intelligent writer." Joy Williams, "Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Quick and the Dead"" "Haslett's latest is a sprawling, ambitious epic about a family bound not only by familial love, but by that sense of impending emergency that hovers around Michael, who has inherited his father John's abiding depression and anxiety....This is a book that tenderly and luminously deals with mental illness and with the life of the mind....In Michael, Haslett has created a most memorable character. This is a hypnotic and haunting novel." "Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)"" "Adam Haslett may be our F. Scott Fitzgerald...A profound, strikingly intelligent story." "Washington Post"" "Exceedingly well written...a high-spirited, slyly astute exploration of our great bottoming out." "The Boston Globe"" "Extraordinary. . . . Frighteningly tender. . . . Displays an order as natural as a tree branch in winter-lithe and achingly austere." "The Boston Globe"" "Haslett possesses a rich assortment of literary gifts: an instinctive empathy for his characters and an ability to map their inner lives in startling detail; a knack for graceful, evocative prose; and a determination to trace the hidden arithmetic of relationships." "New York Times"" "Spectacular. . . . You should buy this book, you should read it, and you should admire it. . . . [It] is the herald of a phenomenal career." "The New York Times Book Review"" "For all its elegiac tone, one of the most striking features of "Imagine Me Gone" is the wicked humor that surfaces in portions of Michael's narrative. Whether he's describing a nightmarish transatlantic crossing or recounting a group counseling session, he's skilled at skewering life's absurdities with sharp wit. For all the darkness that swirls around him, his winning personality makes him the novel's most appealing character." "Shelf Awareness "" "Haslett narrates this soaring, heartrending novel from the revolving points of view of each family member, plumbing the psychologies of his characters. The result is a polyphonic page-turner that slowly reveals its orbit around Michael, the eldest son. Michael's troubled psyche, an inheritance from his father, proves to be the troubling linchpin at the center of this intensely personal work." "Booklist (Starred Review) "" ""Imagine Me Gone" is a beautiful, elegant, harrowing story of the dissonant music of family, a poignant book that makes you eager, once more, for the complications of the world." Colum McCann, "National Book Award winner for "Let the Great World Spin" "" Praise for" Imagine Me Gone" ""Imagine Me Gone" is an extraordinary work of art. The family Adam Haslett has created feels as true and as complex as our own actual families are, and somehow lays as deep a claim upon our love and loyalty. The eldest son, Michael, is simply one of the finest characters I've ever come across in fiction. This beautiful, tragic novel will haunt you for the rest of your life and you will be all the more human for it." "Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winner for "Tinkers""" ""Imagine Me Gone" is an extraordinary work of art. The family Adam Haslett has created feels as true and as complex as our own actual families are, and somehow lays as deep a claim upon our love and loyalty. The eldest son, Michael, is simply one of the finest characters I've ever come across in fiction. This beautiful, tragic novel will haunt you for the rest of your life and you will be all the more human for it." "Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winner for "Tinkers""" ""Imagine Me Gone" is literature of the highest order. It manages to be both dreadfully sad and hilariously funny all at once. It is luminous with love." "Peter Carey, Man Booker Prize winner for "True History of the Kelly Gang" "" Praise for Union Atlantic: "The first great novel of the new century that takes the new century as its subject...It's big and ambitious, like novels used to be. It's about us, now. All of us." "Esquire"" Praise for You Are Not a Stranger Here "Haslett is an eloquent, precise miniaturist, and his characters' struggles with their own assumptions collectively provide a fascinating snapshot of life during the era of Prozac, when new ways of thinking about emotion have forced us to adjust our notion of identity and even, perhaps, of grace." "New Yorker""