Imagine Me Gone
Adam Haslett
1 ratings • 1 reviews
Imagine Me Gone
Adam Haslett
1 ratings • 1 reviews
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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This book was for a book club, and I of course left it quite late to start so I hadn't finished it by the meeting but went anyway.
Everyone seemed a bit disappointed--the overall score was 2.5.
For me, the characters were not ones that I really liked or identified with, or really cared about. The shifts in perspective were okay, though I would have liked voices to be a little more distinct from each other. I was also not a fan of the major time jumps.
I understand that this was an examination of both Michael's view of life and also his family's reaction to him, but I felt like Michael's portions distanced me. These were the sections that I found myself counting pages and looking ahead to see how much farther I had to go, and were not fun for me.
The siblings were a bit easier to read but overall I just was forcing myself to continue. Not sure if I can only enjoy or relate to it if I have had mental illness in my own close personal circle?
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