SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2017 A sweeping American drama about the long legacy of mental illness, the bonds of kinship, and the limits of love Michael is John and Margaret's eldest son. He's a precocious kid, smart and funny, obsessed with books and music. His sister Celia is the sensible one in the family: tougher than the boys, unshakeably certain about how the world works. And then there's Alec, the youngest, the most ambitious and also the most sensitive. He grows up in the shadow of Michael's distant coolness and Celia's pragmatic confidence, never quite keeping up with the others. The children are still living at home when their brilliant, beloved father walks into the woods by their house and take his own life. Years later, one of them will follow him. How are we damaged by what we inherit? How much can any family give to save one of its own? And how can you tell the difference between what is passed on and what is picked up - between the truly inherited flaw and the self-fulfilling prophecy? Weaving together the voices of five family members, Adam Haslett imagines how a single isolated tragedy can become the event that defines many lives, unfolding a rich and painful novel that has all the makings of an American classic.

Author Biography

Adam Haslett was born in Port Chester, New York in 1970. He is the author of the short-story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, a New York Times bestseller shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the US National Book Award, and the novel Union Atlantic, winner of the Lambda Literary Award. His books have been translated into eighteen languages and his writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, the Financial Times, and Der Spiegel, among others. He lives in New York and his new novel, Imagine Me Gone, will be published in May 2016 by Hamish Hamilton.