Book review: Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett – a portrait of mental illness
This absorbing story, told in five voices, of a family bonded, riven and bonded again by mental illness across the decades, starts in Maine and loops back to London
Imagi ne Me Gone
by Adam Haslett
Little, Brown and Co
3.5 stars
We never even learn their last name. But we come to know the family at the centre of Adam Haslett’s powerful new novel, Imagine Me Gone, as intimately as if they were our own. When the book opens, brothers Alec and Michael are holed up at a cottage in the US state of Maine during a winter thaw – and something, we gather, has gone terribly wrong.
Before we can figure out what, Haslett circles back to introduce us to the parents, Margaret and John. Their story begins in 1963 when Margaret, an American working at a library in the London suburbs, meets John, an exuberantly talkative Englishman, at a “gin drinks” party thrown by mutual friends, “everyone in ties and dresses”. The couple becomes engaged to be married, but when Margaret returns from a visit home for Christmas, she learns from a flatmate that John has been admitted to the hospital.