Imagine Me Gone (Little, Brown, $26) is the chilling game a father proposes to his children. They’re on a boat. The father lies down, closes his eyes; can the ten- and seven-year old steer the craft to safety on their own? All too soon, the children really do lose their father, a man who has suffered from lifelong clinical depression. The legacy of this mental illness, which the father passes on in the form of severe anxiety to his oldest son, Michael, is the focus of Adam Haslett’s powerful, compassionate second novel. Told from the points of view of all five members of this British-American family, the narrative dramatizes how complicated an organism a family is, how very different the temperaments of its members, and how the suffering of one affects all. Michael’s monologues, in particular, challenge the received image of such disabilities as, well, downers. Michael has one of the sharpest, smartest senses of humor in recent fiction. He’s a wicked parodist. He’s also a brilliant amateur musicologist, analyzing and enthusing over everything from disco to house to ska and beyond. Haslett displays remarkable dexterity in conveying these five distinct voices, and his deep insight comes through in prose that sings, getting “down in words what doesn’t live in words.”
