“They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had / and add some extra, just for you.” So goes the famous first stanza of Philip Larkin’s famous poem “This Be the Verse”—one of many literary forebears forbearing Adam Haslett’s second novel, Imagine Me Gone. Haslett’s short-story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, earned a National Book Award nomination and a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this effort did just as well.
The novel begins with a flashy, cinematic prologue that’s at once a distraction and a giveaway, but I was sold 20 pages in, when Haslett drops into the mind of Margaret, a mother of three who’s trying to keep a house, her marriage, and her own psyche together, despite the financial and emotional hardships generated by her husband’s clinical depression. What does clinical depression look like for John? He can function at a high level for long periods of time, but every once in a while he’s bedridden for weeks and can’t really move…
