The Immortalists

Benjamin, Chloe. The Immortalists. New York: Putnam 2018. Print

First Sentences:

Varya is thirteen ....

They wind through the neighborhood, all four of them: Varya, the eldest; Daniel, eleven; Klara, nine; and Simon, seven. 

Description:

What if you had the opportunity to know the exact date of your own death? Would you want to find out that information? Would knowing this date change your life in any way? In Chloe Benjamin's novel The Immortalists, the four young siblings in the Gold family decide to obtain this information for themselves. They meet with a gypsy woman and are each secretly told the dates of their deaths. Some of the children share this information about when they will die with their brothers and sisters, while one only says he will die "Young."

What follows in this brilliantly-written novel are separate chronologies for the lives of Varya, Daniel, Klara, and Simon Gold. Broken into four sections, the book tells four individual narratives, each focusing on one sibling, stretching from their late teens years on into adulthood. One child goes on to become a dancer, one a magician, one a doctor, and one a scientific researcher.

Readers become immersed into each of these lives, so I don't want to reveal more. But all the time as their stories unfold we readers cannot help wondering what an individual's death date is and what each character will do with this knowledge. Those dates are almost never referred to by the siblings, that is, until we finally learn that their day is upon them.

The tension between their everyday lives, loves, triumphs, and defeats is palpitating. While they have little interaction with each other in adulthood, there is a knowledge that each person, like themselves, knows a secret only they are privy to and must deal with that knowledge in their own way.

He heard the siren song of family -- how it pulls you despite all sense; how it forces you to discard your convictions, your righteous selfhood, in favor of profound dependence.

I couldn't stop turning pages, both because I was totally engrossed in their separate life stories and because I just had to know how each person addressed their secret. A truly fascinating plot, well-written, with characters one really cares about deeply. Highly recommended. 

And yet, and yet: Is it a story if you believe it?...On some days, she doesn't think it's absurd to believe that a thought can make something come true.

Happy reading. 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Benjamin, Chloe. The Anatomy of Dreams.   

The headmaster at a boarding school introduces two students into his research into dreams and how, shaping their dreams, they can possibly control stress and tension. But there are developments that bring questions into all three lives and reality and dreams.