These obsessive acts cause people to avoid Michael, which serves to increase his anxiety. He frequently obsesses about women that he cannot have because they are married or gay.

In the aftermath of John’s death, his family focuses on helping Michael whose mental state continues to get worse as he gets older. John says his goodbyes to his children and takes his own life. His worry over his inability to provide for his family triggers his depression. John’s life begins to change as he loses a number of jobs and finds himself unemployed with no possible employment on the horizon. Michael is the only one of the three who, like his father, suffers from mental illness. They have three children: Michael, Celia, and Alec.

Many years pass and Margaret and John remain together. Margaret still plans to marry him and stays with him as he recuperates. His ongoing battle with depression has landed him there, though this is the first time it has occurred in a long time. She visits the United States for the Christmas holiday and then returns to England where she finds that John is in a hospital. This is a hypnotic and haunting novel.” The young American girl Margaret is prepared to marry her fiancé, the young Englishman John. But in Michael, Haslett has created a most memorable character. Occasionally, the narrative style (it switches among monologues, letters, and messages from the doctor’s office) feels stiff. Publishers Weekly said of Haslett’s book, “This is a book that tenderly and luminously deals with mental illness and with the life of the mind. The novel was named to the shortlists for the National Book Award and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The story is narrated by the couple and their three children, each providing the point of view for different chapters. John suffers from depression, a condition one of his children shares. American author Adam Haslett’s novel Imagine Me Gone (2016) revolves around Margaret and John, a married couple.

Imagine me gone review