Imagine Me Gone

DNF

Beautiful prose in this novel, told from multiple points of view of the 5 members of one family. It's a bit depressing, and the outcome is mostly known from the broad hints in the prologue, but it's a great ride getting there. Writers can learn a great deal about characterization from the wonderful details of how these family members interact with each other.

I found it thematically very similar to Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows: the ethics of suicide, genetic burden, transgenerational trauma are major themes in both. Imagine might lack the eloquence of Sorrows but I found it structurally more elegant. The fact that both books feature chronically depressed characters who are obsessed with music is interesting considering Michael's (the protagonist of Imagine) driving theory.

*EDIT
Changed to 5 stars because I still regularly think about it 10 months (& multiple novels) later.

What if you knew the person you were marrying wasn't well...wasn't emotionally well? Would you go ahead and marry him? How would it go? What would your lives be like? And your children?

That's Imagine Me Gone. It's a painful ride, but a ride that feels true on every page.

I'm thinking about life a little differently after reading this book. That's a sign of a fabulous book for me.

Hope you will give it a try, too.