Imagine Me Gone

When Margaret's fiancée, John, is hospitalized for depression in 1960s London, she must decide whether to continue with their plans or step away from the suffering she now knows. She chooses to marry him, and the novel traces the consequences of that choice for their family over decades. At the story's center is their eldest son, Michael, a brilliant, anxious music fanatic who makes sense of the world through parody. Michael's younger siblings—Celia, who is savvy and responsible, and Alec, who is ambitious and tightly controlled—struggle alongside their mother to care for Michael's increasingly troubled and precarious existence. The narrative is told in alternating points of view by all five family members.