The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

Description

“This literary family saga is perfect for fans of Celeste Ng and Donna Tartt.” —People Magazine (Book of the Week)

“A sprawling, enchanting family saga.” —Entertainment Weekly (The Must List)

A dazzling family love story reminiscent of Everything I Never Told You from a novelist heralded by Lorrie Moore as a “great new talent.”

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.

Editoral Review

An Amazon Best Book of January 2018: The Immortalists doesn’t seem like a second novel: it has all the unexpected brilliance of a debut hit, combined with the assured style and long-sighted wisdom you’d expect from an older, more experienced writer. But author Chloe Benjamin is – astonishingly — only 28 years old, and her ambitious and deeply moving novel sets a high standard for realistic fiction in 2018 – and it’s only January. Benjamin tells the story of four teenage siblings who, on a lark, ask a fortuneteller to reveal the dates of their deaths. Whether that fortuneteller is a con artist or is genuinely gifted with second sight doesn’t interest Benjamin so much as how one piece of possibly spurious information conspires with character and circumstance to warp the siblings’ choices as they grow into adulthood. Along the way, Benjamin poses intriguing questions about the value of longevity and whether we are victims, or perpetrators, of our own fates. Though Benjamin is wary of magical thinking, her omniscient writing casts a masterful spell that will leave you eager to see what her third novel will bring. –Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review