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The Immortalists

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If someone offered you the chance to know the date of your death, would you take it? How would knowing this most important date change the way in which you would live your life? Would you make the most out of everyday or would you spend your life running from it?

In the Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin the Gold siblings (Simon, Klara, Daniel, and Varya) are faced with this very question. The story begins in New York in 1969 when Daniel overhears a story about a fortune teller, or seer, passing through town. He rushes back to his siblings and tells them all about what he heard, how she can predict the date of their death, and how he wants them all to go to see her.

The story that follows spans from 1978-2010 and is broken into four sections with each section following a different Gold sibling. We see how this single event from their past has gone to shape each of their lives both individually and as a collective as they have grown up.

The Immortalists is about family, the bonds between siblings, love, and regret. The characters are well developed and come alive on the page leaving you wanting more. Benjamin takes you back to the historic settings with her rich descriptions, especially the Castro of the 1980's.

I would like to offer a trigger warning as there a few passages of fairly explicit homosexual sex. That being said, I would highly recommend this book and am looking forward to more by Benjamin.

Thank you to NetGalley for the e-ARC.

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I received this from netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

The Gold siblings growing up in New York, 1960's. They decide to visit a fortune teller, she tells each of them the day of their death.

I had a hard time getting into this story and was rather bored. I ultimately decided, I just don't care. The book separately focuses on each individual sibling, gay Simon, magician Klara, army doctor Simon and research scientist Varya.


2☆

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This book is a really excellent character study of four siblings who are told the date of their deaths by a fortune teller while they are very young. Each sibling's story is told with a depth of emotion that reaches out to the reader and draws them in to share with the love, the guilt, the fear, and the anxiety each one feels. I highly recommend this one.

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

The entire novel focuses on this question. In 1969 in New York's Lower East Side, the four Gold siblings find out that there is a psychic traveling in their area, giving out fortunes. Curious and skeptical, the Gold children seek out the psychic to learn of their own fortunes. After that day in 10969, the Gold siblings' - unambiguous Varya, imperious Daniel, magic-driven Klara, and fanciful Simon - lives change forever.

What the woman tells the children not only impact how they lived, but also affected the siblings' relationship with one another. It divides the two older siblings -Varya and Daniel - from the two younger siblings - Klara and Simon. All Klara wants is to pursue a career as an illusionist and leaves New York to San Francisco with Simon. San Francisco becomes the place where Simon finds himself and is able to be who he is and love who he wants and not be the son that must take over the family business. The two younger siblings wind up living reckless lives, counting down the days to their death date. Every day is lived to the absolute fullest, away from home with little contact with their mother and other siblings.

On the other hand, the older siblings live careful lives, both taking up stable careers - Varya a researcher on longevity and Daniel a mlitary doctor - and take care of their aging mother. Both siblings are angry at their younger siblings for being reckless and believe that if what the psychic told them hadn't affected them as much, they would live long healthy lives. Varya lives a careful life where everything is structural and straightforward, whereas Daniel lives a relatively normal life with a wife and a nice home. However, both have secrets that slowly causes them great guilt and anxiety.

The novel itself is amazing with a few plot twists. The format of it goes through the lives of each sibling from youngest to oldest, often crossing with each other in terms of dates. My only complaint was that at some points the timeline can be quite confusing and jumps around.

Overall, the novel was very well written and I'm still in awe over it and how well Benjamin was able to write each character. It makes me wonder, would I want to know my death date? If so, would I let it affect the way I lived my life?

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Chloe Benjamin divides her novel into parts for each of the main characters, siblings, Simon, Klara, Daniel, and Varya. I could easily have read an entire story about each character. The four kids belong to Gertie and Saul Gold, a couple who live on the lower east side of Manhattan. It is the late sixties, and the Gold saga begins.

Saul is a tailor and owns the business, left to him by his father, a Jewish immigrant who fled Europe with his father after his mother died in the pogroms in 1905. Saul toils daily and takes what life offers. Saul is a good provider, a religious man who has high expectations of his children. He wants them to achieve the highest level of education possible. Nothing less is acceptable.

The four children are good kids who care about each other and stick together. Daniel and Varya have high hopes for the future. Simon and Klara are still young but not all that enthusiastic about academic achievement. After the kids visit a woman on Hester Street, the plot moves forward, and the story unfolds with just the right amount of suspense, enough to keep me glued to the book!

This a family saga that made me laugh and choke up with emotion. It is the story of many of our lives, that universal narrative that makes fiction, done well, art like no other. No two families are the same, but we all have our stories, some as dramatic as the Gold story. The book felt cathartic for me. This novel will be on my best of 2018 list.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley, the author, and G.P. Putnam's Sons. Thank you.

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Four young siblings learn of a special 'seer' in their neighborhood, an old woman who can tell them their future, specifically to impart to them the day they will die. Each child hears this date alone, and must live with the consequences of knowing their future and thus the story begins. As the tale unfolds, we follow each of the four children in singularity: Simon, a young gay man, as he heads to San Francisco in the early 1980's; Klara, a free spirit who dreams of becoming a magician; Daniel, the oldest boy in their Jewish family, working towards 'normalcy;' and Varya, the eldest child, career biologist, with deeper secrets than anyone ever knew. This is a strange yet extraordinarily compelling book. Often, I did not care for the characters - their habits, their life choices, their relationships. Yet I could not put this book down. It brings up provocative themes and ideas: how would one live their life if their day of death was foretold? Do we owe it to ourselves to fulfill our life's dream? Or do we owe loyalty to our families? Is being selfish wrong or is it fulfilling our passion? The Immortalists would be an incredibly provocative choice for a book club, eliciting some fascinating and powerful conversation.

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This was an outstanding book! I can't think of a single way that this book could've been better.

In "The Immortalists," Chloe Benjamin tells the story of the four Gold siblings who visit their neighborhood fortune teller. During this visit, the dates in which the siblings will die are revealed. Later when a personal tragedy occurs, this information steers the Gold children down various paths of coping.

With expertly written characters, Benjamin draws readers into the story, exploring the themes of fate and family dynamics and creating an unputdownable novel. At times, the book was slightly predictable but I attribute this to effective foreshadowing.

I highly recommend this novel.

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How would you live your life if you knew the exact timing of your death?

The Gold children are living in New York and are bored to death! When they hear of a mysterious woman, who can tell you things. Mysterious things. Such as when you are going to die. 

Knowing changes them all. Four siblings who shape their futures on the word of a palm reader. The youngest off to San Francisco to live life the way he wants. Along with him goes Klara who dreams of being a magician or illusionist. While Daniel studies to become a doctor and Varya becomes a scientist pushing the boundaries between science and immortality. 

This book was nothing like I expected. It is so many small stories rolled into one big story. There are the individual stories of each member of the family along with the story of them as siblings. It's about science, religion, family, dreams and the reality of life.  About what is expected of us as family while remaining true to our own dreams and hopes.

Excellent Book!

Netgalley/January 9th 2018 by G.P. Putnam's Sons

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Review to come at end of dec with cross posted link

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This was my first ever arc from Netgalley, which might have affected the way I tore through the book. I was really excited to read it, and most of it was pretty exciting to read. The four sections, one for each sibling, works well for the book because each sibling's story comes up in every section. It wasn't disjointed — it didn't feel like a book of short stories, which is what I was afraid of.

Another reviewer mentioned finding the second half more boring (I'm paraphrasing) from the first, and I also expected that by the summaries of what each child ends up doing. A dancer in San Francisco and a traveling magician sure sound like more interesting lives to read about than a doctor and a scientists. Daniel's ending did have some issues for me. I had to read the last few pages a few times to understand what was going on and it still came out of nowhere. I'd hoped to get more info than "my brother got mixed up into a bad situation" about it later. With that said, I flew through Daniel's and Vanya's chapters. [And I thought the decision to end the book before her death, thus leaving us hanging about how much truth was in the "gypsy's" prediction, was a good one. (hide spoiler)]

From page one (or just reading the description on Goodreads), you know this book centers around the question, "If I knew when I would die, how would it affect my life?" As has already been noted by many, each sibling handles the prediction differently, but it ultimately changes all of their lives. [ So in the end, you can decide for yourself if she can truly tell the future or she's a crazy old lady, and it doesn't really matter anyway. I'm just glad I don't know of any around here to find out for myself.

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What would you do if you knew the day you would die? How would your life change or would it at all? This story tracks the life of 4 siblings from the day they found out in 1969 and into the rest of their lives.

This book gives a very interesting look into humanity and how certain knowledge can change and impact lives. I really found myself connecting to different parts of each of the four siblings and felt like each of them had very real and human reactions. This book was very interesting and gave me a lot to think about while I was reading it.

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I received this book via NetGalley after I requested it, and I had requested it because of extremely high ratings on Goodreads. Unfortunately, I did not end up aligning myself with all those reviews. 

It is not extremely rare for me to like certain books that the rest of world does, mostly because I like an element of triumph in my books. This book is a story about four siblings who set out to find a fortune- teller who could tell you the day on which you would die. Once this information is received, they react to it in different ways. Either because of the information they have been provided or their inherent traits, each choose different ways to lead life and cope with what adversity throws at them. There is a thread of despair that is threaded through all the narrations told by each sibling in turn. This mood is what threw me off. How and where they end up is the crux of the tale.

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A delicious, fat, intelligent, tearjerker of a family saga spanning the lives and deaths of four Jewish siblings. The writing is better than that sentence suggests. Benjamin surprises often with the originality and deft weave of her material.. Yes, there are predictable moments and implausible ones too, but overall this is a smashing indulgence of a story. Congrats.

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I was pleasantly surprised with this book. It will draw you in from the start.

Imagine going to a woman who can tell you when you will die. When four young siblings go to visit this woman, their lives will change forever.

The rest of the story you will follow them on their lives path. I found their stories to be amazing as it was hard to put this one down.

The Immoritalist was very well written, although I found some of the siblings stories to start off slow, what they turned into was worth the weight.

I look forward to reading work from Chloe Benjamin in the future.

As always, thank you NetGalley for the advanced read! They are truly appreciated!

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The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

What would you do if as a child someone told you the day you were going to die? Would it empower you to live life to the fullest? Would that knowledge drive you to despair? Would you believe what you’ve heard or scoff at the chance you were told the truth? The four Gold children went to the old woman out of curiosity. None of them realized how that information would affect them. The fear that it would instill, the overwhelming nature of such information. In turn they each reacted differently, but none of them ever forgot the date they were told. Each of them held that date in their mind and lived. Until that day finally came.

This book was so incredibly well written. I was intrigued from the prologue and couldn’t stop reading. Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya were all extremely well developed characters with differing passions, temperament and goals. And each of them were affected in different ways by the woman who revealed the most damning information one can ever receive. I thought Benjamin did an amazing job in creating these characters and sculpting their lives. Each journey was so believable and utterly heartbreaking.

The Immortalists was a beautiful story about family and about how we choose to live our lives. I’m not sure how I would react to knowing the date of my death or how that knowledge would affect my life. But I understood the choices the different characters made after learning their own. Benjamin, with her well written characters and beautiful storytelling, created a novel that allows you to get swept away on those imaginings while seeing how life unfolds differently for everyone. I can’t wait to see what else Benjamin has in store.

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Thought provoking, multi-layered, drenched with feeling -- alive on nearly every page.

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In 1969 in New York City, four siblings walk to Hester Street. Varya at thirteen is the eldest. Daniel is eleven, Klara is nine, and Simon is the youngest at seven. Daniel is leading the way. They pass their father's tailor shop but continue on to an old apartment building. They seek a woman who tells fortunes. She can even tell you the day you will die.

Each child must go into the woman's apartment alone. Each child leaves altered, never to be the same.

Klara is the first to enter the fortune teller's apartment. Next came Daniel, then Simon, and last of all Varya. "What if I change," Varya asks, upset by what she learns. "Then you'd be special. 'Cause most people don't."

In The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin offers readers a book with big ideas that also reads like butter, an addictive story that lures one on into deeper waters. Each sibling's history is revealed with its impact upon the others. Are the choices they make a reflection of what they believe will come? 

Simon and Klara are the risk-takers who leave home for San Francisco. Simon embraces an open life as a gay man, becoming a dancer in a gay club. Klara is obsessed with the grandmother, a performer whose specialty was hanging suspended in midair from a rope which she held in her teeth. Klara pursues magic and performance, imitating her grandmother's famous act.

Daniel and Varya take no risks. Daniel leads a solid life as a military doctor and family man. Varya becomes a researcher in longevity, struggling with obsessive disorder, especially about health.

In her struggle to overcome her losses and fears, Varya learns that the power of words can change the past, and the future, and the present.

This book is going to make a big splash.

I will warn that Simon's story, the first to be revealed, includes descriptions of gay sex and the pre-AIDS San Francisco gay scene. Varya's story includes lab animal testing; Benjamin's research into animal testing moved her and she offers a link to the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance.

I received a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

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Not my style of book, at all. The reviews made it sound fantastic, but the writing was harsh and depressing. I don't want to spend my time in a world like that.

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I will not be reviewing the book as it seems very unfair to base a review on only a portion of the book.

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