For such a grand title, I feel "The Immortalists" misses the mark. For a story about family, I didn't believe any of the connections. I was also unconvinced by Simon's timeline. It takes skill to write something new and memorable set during the AIDS epidemic, and for me, this falls flat compared to other books. I was also uncomfortable with the introduction of sexual aspects that did not relate, nor further the story. I only need to know about a man's penis if he is actively using it - if he's simply doing the dishes, whether it's erect or flaccid has absolutely no relevance. I don't know when this style started happening but I wish editors would be a little more aggressive in removing it when not relevant.

At the heart of this novel is the question, if you knew the day that you would die, how would that affect the way you live? As children in 1969, the four Gold siblings meet an elderly woman who tells each of them the date of their death. The experience haunts all of them. Youngest child Simon is told that he will die at twenty and so runs away from home while still young and flings himself into the pre-Aids gay scene in San Francisco. Klara is told that she will die at thirty-two and becomes fascinated by magic and develops a stage act in Las Vegas. Middle child Daniel embraces respectability and stability, his passing foretold at forty-eight. It is the eldest, Varya, who is promised a long life but yet becomes fixated by research on primates on extending longevity. Benjamin concentrates on each sibling in turn, making it a story told in four acts. Simon and Klara are by far the most engaging characters and the second half of the novel lagged without them, moving from the glittering nightclubs and stage scene to drab suburbia. Which in itself is a commentary on how each of the siblings responded to their impending mortality. Benjamin has put a lot of eggs in this particular basket and the reader does rather feel the weight of her research for each new setting. The intriguing question would surely have been how far this foreknowledge led the Gold siblings down their respective paths or whether the prophecies were ever genuine but that is never truly explored. Ultimately, the Golds' struggle is not so very different to the rest of us. We know that death awaits us all. We hope to keep it at a distance for as long as we can but there are no guarantees. Perhaps there is an absurdity in the way that most of us choose to ignore this fact. The most affecting part for me though was the clear sibling bond even after long periods of estrangement and separation and the grief at the staggering family bereavements. More than anything, the Golds just seemed like a sad, loss-worn family and the unhappiness made this a tricky novel for me to bear.

I adore this book. Loved the characters and the story. Funny, sad, will definitely read more from the author.

What a beautiful novel. A family saga, it details the story of a family from childhood until the day each of them dies.

One of my favourite reads of 2018.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher.

What a book! Bordering the line between commercial and literary fiction, the premise is deceptively simple: if you and your siblings all knew when you would die, how would you live the rest of your life? What choices would you make? What if you believed it was true—or did not?

This is a stunningly powerful piece of work.

I really enjoyed this book. It was well written and all the characters were easy to engage with. What was interesting is that I read this alongside a buddy. I loved it and she hated it. Perhaps it is one of those books that polarises opinions but for me it was a real winner. I would even be willing to read it a second time and there are very few books which I am prepared to do that.

An enjoyable novel, chronicling the lives of five children that have been told individually the date and time of their deaths, and how each went about facing that fact. Enjoyed reading it, but can’t say I loved the book... perhaps in the end you wanted a bit more out of the story. A solid 3.5 then.

When I’m considering an adult contemporary book, there are two things that when featured in the synopsis will make it a must-read. One of those is any mention of a focus on sibling relationships and the other is the topic of mortality and attitudes towards it. So when The Immortalists appeared in an e-mail from NetGalley, I knew that I had to give it a go.

It’s 1969 in New York City and the Gold siblings have received news of a travelling psychic in town. The woman claims to be able to tell anyone the date on which they will die. The temptation proves too much for the young Golds -bookish and astute Varya, curious and tenacious Daniel, dreamy and quirky Klara and little angelic Simon- and they set off to find out their futures. What will each of the Golds do with their prophecies? Will they use it to live their lives unashamedly or will they simply hurtle towards their fates, powerless to stop it?

As a wide-eyed teenager, Simon realises he is gay and makes his way to San Francisco, in order to live out his years without any restraints. Watching him figure himself out was one of the most satisfying parts of the book. I also loved the romantic element of his story, which was simply beautiful and incredibly heartbreaking. Although he can come across as self-absorbed, Simon’s selfishness is understandable to a degree. He is adamant that nothing will hold him back and lives every day as if it’s his last. Overall, his life is sexy and tragic, fast-paced and more than a little inspirational.

Klara has always been fascinated with magic and illusion. As a beautiful talented magician, she captivates audiences by blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. When she meets the manipulative Raj and gives birth to their daughter Ruby, Klara is forced to focus more on the present and the things that really matter. However, the pull of her dreams is constantly tugging at her. It’s clear that she is dissatisfied with the way her life has played out, which -as with Simon- comes across as selfish. Sadly, her demise only enhances this opinion of her but on reflection, it’s highly possible that there is an element of mental illness at play in Klara’s story. Ultimately, it appears that she burned too bright for this world and willingly followed her fate into the next.

Desperately seeking a sense of security, Daniel marries his college sweetheart Mira and pursues a career as an army doctor post 9/11. Assessing soldiers’ ability to go to war makes him feel like he is making a positive impact on the world. As his prophesied date draws nearer, he decides to challenge fate and aims to track down the psychic and confront her. His actions were quite erratic and reckless, which I found quite grating and immature for a guy in his fifties. I loved the scenes where he was simply spending time with his family -including his niece Ruby- and I really enjoyed watching their relationship grow. Daniel’s story was the most dramatic of the four and the final pages of it pushed my heart into my mouth.

Eldest sibling Varya immerses herself in scientific research into longevity of life. To cope with all of the loss in her life, she dedicates herself to prolonging the lives of primates. Although she has more than a few skeletons in her closet, she seems determined to keep that closet securely locked. When an enigmatic young journalist turns up at her lab claiming to be writing an article to promote her work, she is a little suspicious. The prophecy seems to have turned Varya’s heart to stone. She is very reluctant to form any close human relationships for fear of losing them like she lost her siblings. Throughout her story, Varya is on a journey of self-discovery. Even though she is a grown woman, she is still altering her views on what a good life really is. She is still figuring out what makes her truly happy, which I really appreciated. Adult fiction tends to feature well turned out, middle-aged characters with seemingly nothing else left to discover, so I was pleased that this tired trope wasn’t resorted to.

I really enjoyed the structure of The Immortalists. I loved that each sibling’s story was focused on in turn. It meant that the reader got to really invest themselves in each of the stories and each of the characters were fully fleshed out. Obviously with them being siblings, they did cross over into each other’s narratives at times. However, the fact that they drifted apart as adults meant that we got ample opportunity to get to know them as individuals.

It was so interesting to see their differing attitudes to what the mystic told them. Varya and Daniel chose to dedicate their years to helping others and leaving the world a better place than when they found it. Klara and Simon chose to live their lives exactly as they wanted to without any fear. In the end, it transpired that it actually didn’t really matter because throughout all four stories, mortality was a presence. A dark shadow that seemed to be constantly chasing them. Running, hiding or smacking it straight in the face didn’t seem to have any effect at all.

If you’re looking for a thought-provoking book written in a philosophical style, I cannot recommend The Immortalists enough. Morally complex characters, soul-enriching talking points and a deep exploration of love, hate and the human condition.

I was slow to begin this book as I wasn’t sure I liked the premise (four siblings in New York find out about a psychic who can tell you the date of your death, and they sneak out to visit her]. It turned out to be one of my favourite books of recent times, the story focusing on the siblings’ adult lives with the visit to the fortune teller in the background. It asks questions about the choices we make in life, how we might base them on things we know (or think we know) about our destiny. Mostly, however, this is a story about a family, about brothers and sisters and parents, how they cling to each other or seek to separate, how they connect with and love other people and life itself. The characters are beautifully drawn, and each sibling’s story is as compelling as the next. It is such a life affirming book and I didn’t want it to end.

This book has gone straight into our shop's recommended section! Such a wonderful premise, and a really original which has been brought to life with Chloe Benjamin's vivid writing. I loved the characters of the children, and the adults they became. Shocking, heartbreaking and thought-provoking.

Overall a good read. The youngest brother’s heartbreaking experiences in San Francisco was the real emotional centre of the story. While the oldest brother’s far-fetched narrative was the weakest.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy in return for an honest review.

Siblings follow a strange rumour and get predicted the date of their deaths but never tell each other what the woman said. What seems like a concept-novel becomes a much richer and more satisfying read as it takes darker turns.

The Immortalists is a heartbreaking, beautiful story of four siblings and how they live their lives after they believe, to varying degrees, that they know when they might die.

A family saga about life and death, faith and destiny and how you choose to live your life knowing the exact day your own death.
Do you live it differently with that knowledge or do you try to cheat death itself?
A deeply profound read that leaves a lot of room for speculation and pause for thought.

Although it took me several attempts to get into this, I am so glad I persevered. It has been a while since I read something which gave me so much food for thought and, although I enjoyed certain narratives more than others, each of the siblings was so richly drawn that I felt they lived and breathed on the pages. An unusual, arresting and unforgettable novel and one I'd recommend to reading groups/book clubs in particular.

What a great book this is! I love it when you read a book that doesn't conform with what you expected, but in the best possible way. This tells the story of the Gold siblings who go to see a fortune teller one night in 1969 and find out the date they will die. The book then follows each Gold through their life from that point. The character portraits here are exquisite and you really get a vivid sense of each sibling (and their friends and significant others) in a relatively short space of time. The prose is accessible and the story being told here, while very moving and emotionally wrought in places, is ultimately hopeful and speaks to the indomitable power of the human spirit and the importance of family. I was quite simply blown away by this book and will recommend it to any and everyone in future.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I am currently working on expanding our school library's senior section after years of a dismal and uninspiring selection of books that our older readers never checked out. My job has been to seek out much more diverse, gripping and modern books that will get them into reading by appealing to as broad a range of readers as possible. This really appealed to me because of its fantastic narrative and sense of atmosphere, combined with believable characterisation and its intriguing premise. It's hard to get young people into reading and if the library is not stocking the kind of book that they might grow up to buy as adult readers then we are not really meeting their needs. I can imagine this provoking lots of discussion after finishing it and a long queue of people trying to reserve it as they've heard so much about it. Will definitely be buying a copy and know that it's going to be a very popular choice. An engrossing read that kept me up far too late to finish reading it. It certainly stood out from the other books that I was considering and I look forward to converting more Chloe Benjamin fans in future!

A beautiful, tragic tale, that looks at the ideas of fate, and what it means to know your future. In 1969 four siblings visit a woman who can tell them the day they're going to die.

For the rest of their lives, the knowledge follows them, shaping the choices they make.

This book was so beautiful, and so searingly honest, that there were times I had to stop reading to think about what it said about God, and fate, and faith, and how we feel about ageing. It's a book that constantly asks is it better to live, or enough to simply survive. I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

This novel garners the doomy sonority of Greek tragedy, following the lives and deaths of four siblings who are told exactly when they are due to die. In this haunting saga about mortality, a Romany woman with “powers” offers each of the Gold children – Klara and her siblings Simon, Daniel and Varya – a prediction of this exact day. Only Varya is vouchsafed old age, through isolation, merely surviving, rather than living.

The question this novel raises is whether it is better to know your fate, or is it inevitable? The Immortalists is not just a novel about grief; it conjures characters with such dimension that you mourn them too, a magic rare enough to leave one astonished.

Wowsers! I am often struck by how good Tinder Press is at picking its titles – at least all the titles of theirs that I have picked up have been absolute crackers!

The Immortalists is no exception, coming from a premise that I think occupies many of us more than we would like to admit – if we knew when we were going to die, how would we live?

The Gold siblings are so very different, despite their hand-in-hand upbringing so, obviously, their responses to finding out their dates of death are very different, with some racing headlong towards their dates and filling their lives with colour, while the others try to minimise themselves until you wonder what is the point of living if you are not going to live?

Out of all the sections, the one about Simon was the one that I took to the most. Although you can see what is going to happen to him from a mile away, just by looking at when the book is set and doing some basic maths, getting to the inevitable is a riotous, colourful and emotional experience. Klara’s chapter too is beautifully written, making what happens to them both equally tragic.

Above all, The Immortalists asks the question of what we would do if we knew when we were going to die, but it does not offer easy answers. It shows us four possible responses to the situation and shows us too that even if you know when your time is up, what happens until then still has the power to surprise. It was a book I was still thinking of long after finishing it and it’s one of those books that has the power to provoke further debate in the longer term.