The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
~ Andrea Li
[spoilers!]
Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists spans five decades following the lives of the Gold children: Simon, Klara, Daniel, and Varya. It starts in the year 1969 in New York City, where Daniel leads his siblings to see “the woman on Hester Street.” The rishika claims to know the day that anyone will die. One by one, each of the children has their fortune told by the old woman in a cluttered, messy apartment. No matter how hard they try to forget that day, the dates are ingrained into each sibling's mind for the rest of their lives.
The narration jumps to 1978 in Simon’s perspective. Their father Saul dies, and it is 16 year old Simon's job to take over the family’s tailoring business. Knowing he has an early death, Simon doesn’t want to waste his life suppressed, being someone he is not. He runs away to San Francisco with Klara, gets a job at club, becomes a ballet dancer, and comes out as gay. A new and unknown disease hits the city, and Simon dies of AIDS on the day the rishika predicted. Simon was grateful for the rishika, because knowing his early death inspired him to live out his life the way he wanted.
After Simon’s death, Klara expands her magic show, The Immortalists, to Las Vegas to reach a bigger audience. The stress of her baby and a tight performance schedule causes her to drink frequently and experience black outs. Klara becomes convinced her own magic is real and starts to hear knocks, assuming these are messages from Saul and Simon. Klara times the silence between them, using a code she uses for a magic trick, and it spells out “M-E-E-T M-E” over and over. Her mental state goes in a downwards spiral, and on the day the rishika predicted, she hangs herself, convinced that she's ready to “move on” with her life, to see Simon.
The story moves 1991, following Daniel’s life in New York after he is suspended from his job as a military doctor. Daniel is the most haunted by his siblings’ deaths, because he blames himself for taking them to see the old woman. When a police investigator calls him for information on Klara’s suicide, Daniel becomes consumed with the possibility that Klara and Simon’s deaths being tied to the rishika. Could planting the idea of a day of death in people’s minds somehow trigger them to make it happen? Daniel loses his mind and embarks on a drive across the country to seek revenge and shoot the rishika on his death day. The police investigator trails him to the apartment and in the chaos, shoots Daniel first.
Saul, Simon, Klara, and Daniel have all passed, leaving Varya and her mother as the only ones left in the Gold family. Influenced by how death seems to surround their family, Varya takes part in a 20 year longevity study to figure out how to make monkeys live longer. Varya seems to have OCD and is obsessed with cleanliness. After reconnecting with her long-lost son Luke, it is revealed that Varya has been restricting her own diet and refusing to have any personal connections to anyone, just as she has done to the monkeys. Luke’s anger at Varya wakes her up from her mindset that she has to give up enjoyment in order to live a longer life. This is clearly contrasted to the choices of Simon.
The story wraps up leaving it unknown whether Varya dies on her predicted day. Still, the ending ties up all the loose ends that were traced throughout the novel. However, it leaves the reader with a sense of tragedy and sadness that the Gold siblings never got the final goodbyes they deserved. The book constantly pokes at the connection and lines between life and death, and reality and fantasy. There is an underlying question of whether telling someone the day they will die can influence their subconsciousness to somehow make it come true.
I thought the book was captivating and profound, with eye-opening themes. There was a lot of good symbolism and interconnectedness throughout the novel, such as clear parallels between the lives of a seemingly disconnected family. I enjoyed how the takeaway of the book is not in the characters themselves, but for the reader to see from the overarching timeline of the whole family.
The book was a little bit dense and took me a while to read, but once I got into it the story was really interesting. I recommend this book for when you have time to get into something more heavy and deep, rather than a fun story to get through quickly.
9/10 :)
Fun fact: I bought this book at an airport in Seattle!
This book sounds really interesting! You did a good job explaining it even though it sounds really complicated. I like the idea of the book and the question of whether or not telling someone when they die can make it come true. The book does sound a bit dense a bit complicated, so you did a good job communicating that through the post.
ReplyDeleteI think you did a good job with providing a description of the book and I think I got a pretty good sense of the characters described. I think the individual character stories sound really interesting and I find it pretty interesting how they seemed to take the news in different ways. I also find it pretty interesting that Simon, who had the earliest death date, seemed to have lived the most fulfilling life of the four siblings. Overall it seems like a very interesting book and you did a great job with the review.
ReplyDeleteNice review, I'll be sure to check this book out, since it sounds pretty cool. I found it interesting on how Simon and Varya approached their death dates so differently, with one enjoying life to its fullest while the other tries to prolong it as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteI'm not usually into these kinds of books, but the descriptions of the characters and the plot have made me really want to read it. I'll definitely check this out.
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