Imagine Me Gone

Imagine Me Gone

<b>BEST 100 FICTIONS BOOKS OF 2016 -- <i>Kirkus Reviews</i><br /><br />LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION<br /><br />KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST<br /><br />"Haslett is one of the country's most talented writers, equipped with a sixth sense for characterization."-<i>-Wall Street Journal</i><br /><br />"Ambitious and stirring . . . With <i>Imagine Me Gone</i>, Haslett has reached another level." <i>--New York Times Book Review</i><br /><br /><i>New York Times Book Review</i> Editors' Choice<br /><br />Best Books of 2016 So Far -- <i>Time </i>and<i> Refinery29</i><br /><br /><br />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?<br /><br /></b>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. <i>Imagine Me Gone </i>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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br />