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. 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.
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0 0Haslett’s novel is hitting all of the top book lists and winning many awards this year so I was looking forward to diving into this one. Listed as a TOP 10 NOVELS OF THE YEAR — TIME, Newsday, TOP 10 BOOKS OF 2016 — San Francisco Chronicle, 20 BOOKS THAT DEFINED OUR YEAR – Wall Street Journal, ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: Barnes & Noble, BookPage, BuzzFeed, Elle, Financial Times, Huffington Post, Kirkus, NPR, Refinery29, Seattle Times, Shelf Awareness, WBUR’s On Point, LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION, and KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST…you know, just to name a few….
This is a family drama chronicling the life of a father who is struggling with mental illness and how this illness, in turn, affects their children and his wife. Told in alternating viewpoints,(from the wife to the children) it shares how their father’s illness alters their life course as they grow older.
The struggle for me with this one wasn’t that it was so depressing to read (it was!), but that I struggled to connect with the story and its characters. One of the son’s is so pretentious that it was painful. Honestly, Haslett didn’t build enough of a story around the father for me to really feel attached to him or his struggle. He does provide a great foundation though for showing how illness can alter your life path and how one can shield themselves from finding true love because they have learned to distance themselves from others.
Haslett is a brilliant writer, but like many of the buzz of books of 2016, this just didn’t connect with me in the way I would hope a dramatic story like this would.
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