'That's what music is.… That's what you hear, when it's good: The worlds people lost, the ones they want back.' Imagine Me Gone is very good music.Shortlisted for the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2017 'That's the only real life, the only thing that makes you know you're alive-the backward ache,' Michael tells his brother. It's the epitome of that oft-misappropriated axiom, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. But he's done so with such a fresh voice and playfulness of form-Michael's sections dance from imagined, parodic notes to his therapist, aunt, and creditors, to claustrophobic catalogs of star-crossed crushes and music history-that the resulting novel begs a reevaluation of how we view and cope with tragedy. Haslett is certainly not the first novelist to broach the topic of depression (and it's thematic in both his 2002 short-story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and his award-winning 2010 novel Union Atlantic). There are some books, and this is one, that grab you in the first paragraphs and don't let go, even when the last page has been read. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play It enervates the mind,' he tells his mother) into an obsessive adult, haunted by a childhood vision he fervently wishes he'd acted upon and completely dependent on his family to keep him afloat. And while Celia and Alec go on to build lives in San Francisco and New York, music junkie Michael matures from a precocious 12-year-old ('We can't listen to any more baroque music. Spanning the decades from 1960s England to present-day Maine, the story centers around a heartbreaking decision by John that leaves Margaret to care for the children alone. In fact, hints of the myth underpin the entire book, not least in Haslett's own protean ability to embody the varied viewpoints of Margaret her depressive husband, John and their children, Michael, Celia, and Alec. Stranded on an island and lacking wind to propel his ship, The Odyssey's godsforsaken King Menelaus captures the sea deity Proteus and forces the prophetic shapeshifter to reveal not only how the king angered the gods in the first place, but also how to appease them and find his way home.Īdam Haslett's chronicle of a family plagued by depression, Imagine Me Gone (Little, Brown), is preoccupied with the same intrinsically human hope: that seeking out clues from one's past might heal the present and safeguard the future. This article originally appeared in the May 2016 issue of ELLE.

Imagine me gone novel