This book examines the question: “How would you live your life if you knew the date of your death?” Would it cause you to live life to the fullest or live in fear? Four siblings visit a fortune teller and are each individually told their “death date.” The author focuses on one sibling at a time, and follows each through a portion of his or her life. Since they are siblings, each is influenced to some degree by the actions of the others, and lots of family dynamics are at play.

The storyline is creative and the characters are extremely well-developed. I almost felt as though I knew each of them personally, and could picture the psychological burdens they carried. The stories are interesting, touching on topics ranging from gay life in San Francisco in the 1980’s to performance magic to military medicine to scientific research on longevity. It brings up questions on the meaning of life, and does so in an entertaining manner. It shows how a single event can have far-reaching psychological repercussions. It explores how much of what one believes to be true leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy. Themes include science vs. religion, the power of words, dealing with uncertainty, the impact of knowledge (both good and detrimental). There was a bit of graphic sex in one of the parts, and another was a bit of a stretch on the suspension of disbelief, but overall, I found it almost spell-binding and particularly enjoyed the author’s elegant writing style.

Highly recommended to readers of thought-provoking literature.

The Immortalists is an incredible book. I could not put it down and was fully immersed in the lives of the Gold family. The premise may sound like a fantasy novel, but it is NOT. It is a remarkable, engaging and wonderful book and I am definitely keeping Chloe Benjamin on my radar from now on.

I received an advanced review copy of this book from The Great Thoughts Ninja Review Team. All opinions are my own. After finishing this book I sat in my chair and had a moment of silence. I really don't know what to say that will give this book the justice it deserves. I honestly believe that this book will be one of the best books of 2018. It's simply that great. It's a strong plot with characters you can relate to. This should definitely be on your pre order list and prepare to ignore everything else while you loose yourself in the story.

Let me start by saying that I honestly thought that we would spend a great portion of this novel in funerals and grief. That’s not what happens at all. This novel is as much about life and the paths we take in it, as it is about a foreboding prophecy.

I’ve been reading a lot of books classified as suspense as of late, but this was a family drama that really gets to the heart of relationships. The plot takes us through five decades and I really love how the writing is grounded in time and makes just enough pop culture and historical references to really place us there with these characters. There are bits of nostalgia when we get to the 2000s that I remember from school! (Pink Motorola Razors anyone?)

Chloe Benjamin also handles the 50-year time span well. When I hear that novels take place over decades I always wonder how the writer is going to handle time, especially since we’re dealing with four different narratives, I thought that we might be referencing the same points over and over. That also didn’t occur.

Each section is beautifully crafted bringing us to a different moment in the siblings’ lives. I never felt like this book was dragging. There was always something happening and there was a purpose to each section. Even when there is a brief reflective section it feels natural and is compelling at that point in the story.

I ended up reading this novel in about three days because I was so drawn in by the characters. Not only are the three siblings unique, three-dimensional characters, but each of their lives is populated with characters just as well-formed.

I could not put this book down! From the beginning, when the four siblings visit the fortune-telling gypsy who reveals the date of each one's death, the plot and characters took hold of me and did not let go until the end. Broken into sections that tell the story of each sibling, the book is well-balanced as the stories overlap. The author broaches the subject that the ancient philosophers wrote about, and that is, if we know our fate, is it avoidable? Does it make us live our lives .carelessly or carefully? I am so glad to have been able to read this book. The characters and themes will stick with me for awhile. Much thanks to Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Gobsmackingly gorgeous. I am recommending this to everyone. A perfect winter's tale for the times.

This book was not my cup of tea. I tried a couple of chapters, but couldn't get into it.

Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists is an eerie, yet gorgeous exploration of youthful follies and how they impact our adult lives in myriad and unexpected ways. When the four Gold children set out to visit the fortune-teller rumored to have taken up residence in their neighborhood in 1960s New York, they have no idea that day will haunt them for the remainder of their lives. As they go in, one-by-one, they learn from the old woman the exact date of their deaths. But is it real, or just a scam? And can they ever forget what they've heard? Or defy it? The Immortalists is a beautiful study of how the choices we make can cast long shadows over the lives we live.

My Rating: 5 Stars

A great story-line, a fresh and original idea: a great novel. Have you ever thought about the day of your death? Have you considered the consequences, how that little piece of information could influence the rest of your life?

In the year of 1969, four siblings are told by a fortune-teller the exact date of their demise. In time, the brothers Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya follow their own lives, considering their choices, their actions and choosing the opposite in desperate attempt to avoid fate. But can you really or everything is already laid down for you?

This debut novel is everything I could want in a novel. It's original, attention-grabbing and it makes the reader question what exactly is fate and it exists or not.

The plot is brilliant; it's well-developed and beautifully told. The novel is divided into sections: the lives of Simon and Klara; and those of Varya and Daniel, which leaves enough space to get to know them individually throughout the novel. It does make you think and question if we truly have a hand in our fate if we know when we're going to die what and how we would our lives. One of the first lessons of this novel for me: some things aren't meant to be known.

The style of writing is melodically beautiful; Benjamin is a great storyteller. For me, it's a very important factor to grab my attention right from the beginning of a book and Benjamin makes it seem effortless. The details of the characters and their lives are revealed slowly, in a very subtle way, involving way.

The characters are complex and have a great depth to them. The sections of the novel were well thought and the reader gets to see the two sides of the coin: the siblings that moved away and take the foreknowledge seriously and the other two that stay with their family and take a more grounded approach to life, trying not to give the foreknowledge a lot of thought. Even though there are four siblings, I really enjoyed reading about the connection between Simon and Klara. They leave together to San Francisco which shows their great connection and their closeness.
As characters, they are all different and all aspire for different paths: Simon dreams of living in a big city where he has the freedom to be himself without the pressure of his parents, and Klara the quiet and obsessed with magic dreams of showing her talents to a big public no matter the cost. Varya and Daniel have a more grounded approach and both take careers dedicated to helping others and researching longevity. As they didn’t have the chance to “escape”, they are envious of the freedom that their siblings have. But in the end, everything comes together perfectly and family wins.

The author did a brilliant job in representing the family and how the foreknowledge influences their choices. Even though at times there are reckless and act without thinking, they are making choices and take chances that they might never have taken without that knowledge. The way they rationalise and the way they consider their options made me consider how would I react or even do in a similar situation if I knew the date of my death.

I recommend this book to all the lovers of fiction that enjoy a new concept, a fresh narrator and a brilliant story.

The Immoralists starts strong with a story of 4 siblings who learn the date they will each die. As the plot unfolds we see how this information shapes the choices they each make, or don't make. I was enthralled with the first half or the book, but felt it lacked in the middle. Sometimes it struggled when point of view changed and a new "voice" was needed. Regardless, this novel is worth the read. I couldn't stop thinking about it and the questions it made me ponder, long after I put it down.

I really loved this book! Could not put it down and will be recommending this to everyone as soon as it comes out in January. It will make a great book club choice with so many themes to discuss - family, choices, what makes a meaningful life. Can't say enough about this one!

If you could know the day you will die, would you find out? The Immortalists is a story of four young siblings that visit a fortune teller in 1969 and find out their dates of death. The book is divided into four sections, one for each sibling, that shows you how they each "live" their lives. It's interesting to see how each sibling creates a life with this information. As in real life, this book shows that children can be raised in the same house and become very different people. The Immortalists makes you think about what it means to live and experience life.

This is the book everyone will be talking about this winter; it's already getting big buzz.

I was really loving it until the very end, which was set largely in a research facility testing on monkeys. There was nothing terribly graphic about it but it was sad and jarred me out of my enjoyment of the rest of the book. I'd love to hear Benjamin's reasoning for this setting and imagine it will be the topic of interviews.

Until then, I was captivated by this book which is the story of four siblings who visit a fortune teller. The dates of their deaths are revealed and how they navigate their lives with that knowledge is interesting. For some, it has a greater direct impact than for others but their own date sticks with each of them. I liked Daniel the best and wish I'd had more time with him. He was the most interesting of the siblings.

I must begin with sincere thanks to Penguin/Putnam for the opportunity to read and review this novel before its publication in January 2018.

The Immortalists is an ambitious novel that follows the lives of four siblings, starting from the late 60s in New York. This ‘sibling saga’ offers an excellent pretext for unobtrusive meditations on death, life, identity, faith/religion. At a young age, the curious siblings, two brothers and two sisters, visit a fortune-teller who tells each of them the time of their death. The novel paints their lives and how they make choices based (or not) on this knowledge, using a clever construction that threads their individual accounts consecutively, each starting where the previous one ended, arranged in the increasing order of the siblings’ lifespans. This story-building technique created a powerful narrative crescendo and effectively combined the linearity of more classic novels with the multiple point-of-view storytelling that is so en vogue among contemporary writers.

The plot is carefully constructed around historical and scientific facts, covering an impressive, though not excessive, range of topics, all well researched, one featured in each sibling’s story: ballet, magic, military medicine, nature science (the latter reminiscent of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, but done much more elegantly).

As the individual stories progress, we discover how each child's encounter with the fortune-teller took place. We learn about their personalities, their weirdnesses the others are not aware of, the tiny or big secrets they have, what fear of death does to each of them. They meditate on each other's lives, as well, but it is hard to decide whether or not they learn something from what they see as their siblings' good or bad choices.

Chloe Benjamin’s writing style is quite attractive. Her sentences flow easily, tone changing as appropriate. It is vivid in the childhood scenes that involve all the siblings; boisterous in depicting Simon’s carelessness; bittersweet on the pages that paint the glamour of Klara’s magic shows; joyous in the passages that describe Daniel’s falling in love; coolly detached when relaying Varya’s scientific observations; and even stereotypically humorous in the Jewish matriarch’s airtime.

Time and temporality are important factors in how the author builds her story. The reflective tone lets the reader know that there is more to come, that the events are told through the prism of other, later events. To achieve this, she uses verb tenses most effectively, with the reassuring accuracy of what we were taught about them in school: present events are told in present tense, past events in past, future ones in future.

With some cleverly done magical realism, feminism, and non-judgmentally worded ethics, the book creates a thought-provoking context for raising interesting questions. Is abandoning the path set by our family in order to ‘be ourselves’ truly a brave choice, or quite the opposite: an act of cowardice, as we have no one to whom we should be accountable? To what extent is our newly chosen life courageous, considering that it has detached itself from the greatest source of struggle and burden, i.e. family? Does knowing the date of our own death, as well as that of our beloved ones, change our attitude towards life and towards them? Or – and this was the most important one for me – does this alleged knowledge in fact propel the actions that will lead to that death?

Some of the turns and scenes with emotional potential were perhaps handled too casually; the conclusions felt a bit hasty in two of the siblings’ stories and slightly unconvincing in the other, but these imperfections did not detract much from the exciting reading experience. The one thing I disliked and I strongly hope will be edited out from the final version was the explicitness in describing Simon’s affairs. This sort of detail is misplaced in a book of this caliber.

The Immortalists offers no bestsellerish or genre-typical answers to the philosophical questions it raises and therein lies its greatest value and strength, in my opinion. Is it a subtle praise of moderation? Or a balanced reconciliation of seizing the day and self-imposed restriction? It is up to each reader to decide. Either way, this book is a very enjoyable and aesthetically satisfying read.

5 HUGE STARS!!!!! Chloe Benjamin has completely blown me away with The Immortalists!!!

The novel starts out in 1969 in NYC with the four Gold siblings (varying in age from 7-13 years old) getting their fortunes read from a traveling psychic. Among other personal facts about themselves, the psychic reveals the dates of their deaths. The children's reactions differ, but, regardless, a seed is planted that they cannot be reversed.

I was thoroughly mesmerized by the journey Chloe Benjamin had mapped out for each of the Gold children. I felt like a fly on the wall as we followed the Gold's from the 1970's to the present day. Their struggles, triumphs, self-discovery, tragedies, spirituality, familial bonds and relationships are all woven into this brilliant storyline. The characters were well-developed and the pacing was perfect. I love a book that makes you think/question and Chloe Benjamin did a fantastic job with that (I honestly cannot stop thinking about it)!! I haven't read anything from Chloe prior to The Immortalists, but I will definitely be 1-clicking anything she comes out with in the future!! I highly recommend The Immortalists-- you won't want to miss this gem!!!

I'm about 4.5 stars here.

If you could know the exact day of your death, would you want to find out? If you did find out, how would knowing that information affect how you lived your life? These questions are at the heart of The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin's deeply affecting and beautifully written new book.

In 1969, growing up on New York's Lower East Side, the Gold siblings learn that there is a traveling fortune teller in their neighborhood who can tell anyone the day they will die. While not everyone is sure that this is actually true, the four children—straightforward Varya, bossy Daniel, impetuous, magic-obsessed Klara, and dreamy Simon—decide to find out.

What the woman tells each of them that day will greatly affect their lives, none more so than Klara and Simon. Klara, wanting nothing more than to pursue a career as a magician and illusionist, can't get out of New York and away from her stifling family soon enough, and she lets her younger brother Simon convince them that the two should flee to San Francisco after Klara graduates from high school. Simon knows he is different and dreams that San Francisco will be the place he can finally be free to be who he is, to find love and be someone other than the son destined to inherit his family's garment business.

Klara watches as her brother pursues his life with reckless abandon, and while she wants to pursue her dreams as well, she knows she must be the stable one for him. Both are driven by the fortune teller's prophecy, which causes them to be more reckless and impetuous than they should, but also to take chances they might not otherwise pursue, to truly live their lives to their fullest. And when Klara finally meets someone who can help take her to the cusp of the world she craves entry to, she envisions bringing her illusions and tricks to an appreciating public, no matter the toll it takes on her.

"Some magicians say that magic shatters your worldview. But I think magic holds the world together. It's dark matter; it's the glue of reality, the putty that fills the holes between everything we know to be true. And it takes magic to reveal how inadequate reality is."

Meanwhile, Daniel and Varya, both angry and envious that their younger siblings left them responsible for their aging, widowed mother, try not to focus on whether what the fortune teller told them will come true, yet both pursue more grounded, stable careers—Daniel as a military doctor responsible for determining which soldiers are healthy enough to go to war, and Varya as a researcher determined to find the secrets of longevity. But each have secrets of their own, as well as the shared secrets which cause them increasing fear, anxiety, and guilt.

The Immortalists is a fascinating book, one which was both surprising and predictable. Parts are truly moving and powerful—the first two sections, which focus on Simon and Klara, are much stronger than those which focus on Daniel and Varya. Daniel's section veers off-course with the reappearance of a character and a situation that seems entirely too pat, and Varya's section loses a bit of focus when it dwells in-depth on the science of her research, but the conclusion recaptures the passion, emotion, and beauty of the beginning.

Benjamin is a fantastic storyteller and she has created a tremendously thought-provoking book. Is our destiny really predetermined, or can we have a hand in changing what is destined? Does the idea of knowing how long your life might last encourage you to live life to the fullest, or does it instead fill you with more fear and dread than the unknown would?

I don't think I'll be able to get this book out of my mind anytime soon. The characters were so vivid, and even when the plot lost track, I was immersed in the story, which I'm being vague about because I don't want to spoil anything. I can't wait to see what comes next in Benjamin's literary career.

NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

To buy in to the main premise of The Immortalists, one has to suspend her disbelief..

Four siblings from a Jewish-American family--Daniel, Varya, Klara, and Simon--are united by their shared secret, told to them by a fortune teller during childhood. The secret dictates the way each lives and dies. Each large section of the novel focuses on one sibling during a certain era of his or her life. They are also united by their slightly overbearing mother, Gertie. Each sibling is in some way cursed by the prophecy of the fortune teller; it's hard to believe that each would be so affected by it.

Though the writing was average, the story was interesting enough to keep me reading. The secret, the fortune teller, and Klara's occupation as a mentalist add a sometimes macabre and fantastical vibe to the story but the events, dilemmas, and sometimes strained familial dynamic will ring familiar to most.

Fans of Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist and Erika Swyler's The Book of Speculation might enjoy this book.

Four siblings ranging in age from 9-13 sneak in to see a fortune teller and ask an odd question. They want to know the date of their deaths. Even more strangely, she tells them, individually, but makes them promise not to share the information with anyone; they agree. The book is then divided into sections by sib in order of death date. The premise of the tale is odd, beguiling and interesting; the execution is uneven. The siblings are not equally compelling; their lives not filled with the same passion. Frankly, none of the siblings lead purposeful lives, they all run amok in different ways, all seeking to outrun their death date. The date no one believed but no one shared.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I couldn't put it down. It fascinated me but I didn't really enjoy large parts of it. It had started out well but by the second sibling it began to falter and then really I struggled. I kept expecting it to get better again. I became frustrated but I didn't want to stop reading. I wanted to see how the story ended. I am still playing with scenes in my mind but I would have liked a different ending. The book has real power. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

The Immortalists is -- in a word -- outstanding. It is a deeply moving story that challenges and reckons with what it means to love completely and unconditionally and live fully and authentically. There are few books I choose to read more than once, but this will be one of them. I would recommend this book to anyone.