I loved this book!

It's such a complex yet simple plot about understanding the value of life. It's thought provoking and profound and kept me thinking long after reading.

All of the characters are interesting and engaging; the impact of the prophecy plays out differently for each one adding to the beautiful tapestry of the narrative.

The book has pace - I sailed through it - and is packed with emotion but is never contrived or sentimental.

I would definitely read more from this author. Thanks for the proof.

I liked this book, not my usual thing to be honest but a pleasant surprise, I loved al the characters and the story too. What would you do if you knew the date you’d die? How would that shape how you lived from that day on? A seriously great read and one I won’t forget in a hurry! More please!!!

This is a novel that was on just about every ‘Books to look forward to in 2018’ list, I was lucky enough to be offered it as a review copy. It follows four siblings who go together to see a psychic when they are children in 1960s New York; they are each told the date on which they will die, and the rest of the novel branches off in four directions as they live their lives under the shadow of the prediction. I will be reviewing this one in full closer to the publication date next month, but for now I’ll just say that I really liked it, and I’ve already recommended it to everyone I know!

So much potential but just didn't come together for me. The book begins with the interesting premise of how knowing the day you would die would impact your life and your choices. The 4 Gold children visit a fortune teller one sticky day in New York and they learn the exact date that they will die. The answer isn't always the one they want to hear and has an incredible impact on their lives.
I was really intrigued. However the rest of the story felt like 4 random short stories loosely joined together by a tenuous thread, so much so that it was hard to believe these siblings were family. The individual stories were interesting (if slightly unbelievable) and I enjoyed the psychology of their decisions, how the same information could affect different people in different ways. However, it might have made more sense if these 4 people were friends rather than family, such was the lack of any bond. The fact that they had all experienced a life changing event together seemed to have no impact on their closeness. All in all, I found this book too disjointed to properly appreciate.

I have been waiting all year for a book that makes me think, feel and question everything and finally I have found it, this book guys, this damn book.

If you were told the date of your death, how would it shape your present?
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.
Their 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, hoping to control fate; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality

I put off reading this book for ages, even though I was sent a copy by the lovely people at NetGalley, because everyone and their cat was reading it and raving about it earlier in the year and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that reading a book that has been hyped always disappoints me. So I wanted to wait until all those reviews had faded from my memory. On the other hand, I'm super annoyed that I deprived myself of this fabulous story though, *shrugs*.

Anyway, this book, this book made me feel all the things and think about all the things.
Each of these siblings, who are all independent and have very different ideas on what they want to do, Varya and Daniel are focused on getting an education and stable jobs, Klara wants to be a magician somewhere far away from New York and Simon just wants to be free, somewhere he can be himself and find his own way rather than inheriting his dad's shop by default. They visit a clairvoyant of sorts as young children and each are given a date for their death. The book then splits into four sections, each one following each sibling, with the others popping in and out, starting with Simon and ending with Varya. Thus begins the questions and the thoughts. Simon is told he'll die at 20, so conscious of only having a few years to enjoy life, he runs away and throws himself into everything he can, sex, drugs, bohemian life style and all those other fun things. Then, just as predicted, to the day in fact, Simon dies. Did this happen because the woman they saw really could see the future or because he believed it and lived his life in a way that made it more likely?
His death hits the others hard, Klara in particular. When she too succumbs on the day predicted, Daniel takes over and joins forces with the FBI investigating the woman and then there is Varya...

Honestly, I was debating with myself throughout this whole book, is there such a thing as foresight, did this woman genuinely know when each of these people was going to die when she meets them as children or did she spot on a vulnerability and exploit it, knowing that the thought of approaching the day she gave them would make it more likely they would get into a situation that would lead to her being right. Did Simon die because he was always supposed to or because he was too reckless? Did Klara die becuase she couldn't deal with the knowledge that Simon's date was right or was she always supposed to? SO MANY QUESTIONS.

If you're into books that make you think and feel, don't be put off by the hype, get on it.

Just to further prove how much I loved this, here's the Nick Fury Seal.

In the late 1960s the four Gold siblings are told of a fortune teller and they decide to go visit her in the rundown apartment in which she is staying. Speaking to each individually she gives them one piece of information about their future - the date on which they will die. They do not share this information with each other but that knowledge shapes the course of their lives and becomes a set-fulfilling prophecy.

From a slow start this book really picks up as it tells the tales of the four siblings. The two with the shortest lives are the most adventurous and their tales of gay life in San Francisco and the AIDS epidemic, and the life of a showman moving to Vegas are the most flashy and entertaining. however with the tales of obsession that haunt the lives of the two longer lived siblings it is where Benjamin's writing becomes most mature and deep. This is a really great book.

This passage, near the beginning of the book, gave me great hope for it. I presume Benjamin wasn’t born in 1969, and this is a much better way of shoehorning in the details of the time than the usual would-be casual dropping in of carefully looked-up facts. And, the sense of yearning and missing out must be familiar to anyone who was a young person in any era, that feeling that it is all going on without you, and by the time you are old enough it will be too late. (Though young people living in an apartment in the Lower East Side of New York would seem pretty enviable to the rest of us, also at any time, in terms of the excitements vs the boredom of life).

And then – the setup is wonderful: these four young people are going to see a fortune-teller, one who will tell each of them the date on which he or she will die. And then the book will follow the story of each of them, to find out if the predictions will come true. A most enticing idea.

And bits of it really lived up to that promise. The children had very distinct fates, and one becomes an illusionist, something that is always engrossing.
Klara won’t be a woman who is sawed in half or tied in chains – nor will she be rescued or liberated. She’ll save herself. She’ll be the saw.
But, it became less rewarding as it went on. There is a certain kind of American novel that I rudely describe as ‘And then we went uptown and then we went downtown and then it was Thanksgiving’: lists of events with mysterious trails of meaning, the author saying ‘make what you can of them’. This book did not live up to its original promise that it would not be like that. Benjamin is very imaginative, and seemed to do a good job of getting inside the different siblings’ heads. But after about the first third, I wasn’t anxious to know what happened, excited or amazed by it. It just went on. And there were family falling outs and discussions and it wasn’t that interesting. One amazon reviewer said that the siblings’ fates ‘are relentlessly downbeat and veer between the predictable and the outlandish’, which seemed a fair description.

I thought the book would be full of consideration as to how knowing the date of your death would affect your decisions (and I have read reviews that say this IS the central theme of the book) but to me this was entirely missing. As close as we get is this - one character wondering if the prediction could be similar to taking a miracle drug…
Klara and Simon believed they had taken pills with the power to change their lives, not knowing that they had taken a placebo – not knowing that the consequences originated in their own minds.
And although the opening created a marvelously spooky atmosphere, that just disappeared.

It is a solid, well-constructed, well-written book, and has become a huge bestseller: good for her.

The pictures are fashion adverts from that year, showing the kind of life the children feel they can only enjoy as spectators. One passing character in the book wears ‘purple-tinged glasses and unbuttoned paisley shirt.’

I couldn’t wait to start this book after reading the blurb for what is a very original plot but unfortunately the story seemed to drag out and after a while I felt I was reading it forvreadings same.

Chloe Benjamin’s second novel examines to what extent fate, choice and personality shape our destiny. The story begins in 1969 when four siblings visit a fortune teller, who tells each of them the exact date they will die, some much earlier than the others. Varya is the elder sister who’s just turned 13, then there’s Daniel aged 11, Klara who’s 9 and Simon, the youngest at 7. Although they don’t discuss with each other the dates they’ve been given until years later, none of them can forget the prophecy, which has been planted inside them all affecting the way they choose to live.
The story is then divided into four sections, starting with the youngest of the four and working up, where we learn how each sibling’s life progresses as they grow into adulthood. Simon moves to San Francisco and becomes a dancer. Living life at a high level of intensity by throwing caution to the wind, he embraces his newly discovered homosexuality in the pre-Aids era. Klara conscious by now of his predicted date with death, encourages him to indulge life to the full. She, seemingly, tries to cheat her own death sentence by becoming a magician and mentalist and by performing her death defying Jaws of Life act where she plunges from a great height, hanging onto a rope with just her teeth.
Daniel and Varya assume more responsible roles with Daniel becoming a military doctor and Varya sacrificing her career to care for their mother. Later Varya becomes a research scientist of note, who carries out longevity experiments on primates. All the characters are weighted down with guilt for reasons that will be revealed.
Does the woman really have psychic powers or does the prophecy become self-fulfilling by virtue of its influence on the minds of vulnerable children? As the due date with death arrives for each of our four protagonists, we wait to learn whether the psychic’s prediction will align with their actual deaths.
The premise of the novel, that drew me to this book, is that if you knew the date of your death, how would you choose to live your life. Isn’t this just a new take on how would you spend the last part of your life if you knew the world was going to end imminently? But doesn’t your character and personality lead you to the choices you make in life, so maybe you would make the same decisions no matter what? The author leaves you, the reader, to come to your own conclusions and I felt that we were given no revelations nor a new take on some of the fundamental issues such questions pose. In certain parts of the story there is seriously explicit sexual material, which made me question its purpose and value both to the story and the characterisations. I personally found it very hard to get into the story until I was halfway through and preferred Daniel and Varya’s stories to those of Simon and Klara. For me the writing didn’t flow and was a bit of a slog. Without giving away spoilers I found it hard to understand the choices that Klara and Daniel made, which I thought were out of character. This book has been highly recommended by several agencies as a book to read in 2018, so maybe I’m missing something here, but I can’t say it’s one that I could recommend highly.
Many thanks to Netgalley, Headline Tinder Press and Chloe Benjamin for the opportunity to read and review The Immortalists.

I think I recently came to accept that, one way or another, all books are about humanity's struggle with both life and death. How do we live happily? How do we die peacefully? Why do we live? Why do we die? I appreciate that this is hardly groundbreaking, but I'm still fascinated by the many different stories we are capable of writing as a species in the search for answers, or at least a path that might lead to an answer. The search spreads across genres, centuries and cultures, and I love it. The Immortalists was the latest read I picked up that was searching, and I adored it. Thanks to Headline and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What would you do if you knew the exact day you were going to die? This question has been asked by many a teenager during a half casual. half philosophical conversation with friends, and is usually followed by the equally deep 'If you had to choose between fighting a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses, what would it be?'. But just because it's something everyone has thought about at least once doesn't mean that it isn't worth revisiting. The question of death is also, in many ways, a question about life. If you knew you had 20 years left, how would you spend them? Suddenly you're thinking about family, love, work, happiness, loss, everything that makes a life feel lived. There is no one template for a happy and fulfilled life, but the same is true for an unhappy life. Many novels have explored both the happy and unhappy among us, judged characters for their sins and praised them for their virtues, cried over their misfortunes and rejoiced with them in their victories. Since neither novelists or readers can stop pondering over what makes life and what makes death, we continue to receive novel upon novel exploring, or trying to, the full human experience. The reason I love reading these kinds of books is because in every character I read about I find something reflected that I recognise, about myself, about a friend, a family member. These kinds of novels, at least for me, enrich me experience of life.


In The Immortalists Chloe Benjamin takes an interesting approach to telling the stories of the four Gold children. Initially, in the beginning of the book during their childhood, the novel switches between their narratives, but once adulthood, or rather teenagehood for some, kicks in, Benjamin neatly divides her book into four sections, all narrated by a different sibling, one story following the other. At first I wanted more back and forth, see how the different sibling were coping at the same time with the same events, but there is something ingenious about this split because it echoes the separation of the Gold siblings as they grow up. Not only are most of them physically removed from each other, there is also a mental block between them that means each of them lives their life at a slight remove from the others. It's heartbreaking, but it also allows the reader to really focus on one sibling at a time. The Gold siblings go down very different routes in their lives and so every narrative is filled with both joy and crushing sadness. Benjamin addresses animal testing, HIV, alcoholism, mental health and so much more in The Immortalists but it never feels exploitative. Rather these are things her characters have to deal with, have to confront in one way or another. Throughout the novel there is one thing that stays standing, for better or for worse, a constant presence in all her characters' lives and that is family.

It took me a while to get into The Immortalists. I didn't know what to expect. Would this book gives us something supernatural, would Benjamin infuse the lives of the Golds with Magical Realism? The answer to both of those questions is no. And yet I found myself consistently fascinated by the different roads Benjamin travelled in her novel.Throughout The Immortalists Benjamin sticks largely to the real, the tangible, the felt realities of life. Yet especially in the chapters dedicated to Klara, she allows the magic of faith and belief to shine through. There are some stunning moments in this novel of pure sadness and love that feel magical in their own way. The Immortalists isn't a happy book per se, but each of her characters' lives is described with such gentle honesty by Benjamin that you can't help but get sucked in. Benjamin doesn't shy away from revealing the darker side of her characters, and this can definitely take some readers by surprise, but by following them down the rabbit hole she can also show us the moments of joy and beauty that occur in every life. Despite all its tragedy, The Immortalists is also a love letter for its own kind to the beauty of a human life.

I took my time with The Immortalists but every time I put it down I found myself thinking about it, curious where it would go, what would happen if I kept reading. And so I kept returning to Benjamin's characters. It's a thoughtful book, one that will make you both sad and quietly joyous at the same time. I'd definitely recommend this to fans of Literary and even Philosophical Fiction.

A fascinating scenario in which four siblings visit a fortune-teller and are given the exact date of their death. How each one reacts to this - be it a prediction of a long life or a short one - and what happens is told in four equal parts starting with the youngest, Simon and then going up in age. Does what they have been told dictate how they live their life or were the seeds already there? Each sibling is very different, each story is just as interesting, shocking, unsettling. The oldest, Varya, has the final section which is both heart-breaking and hopeful. This is a novel that will stay with you, well written but very readable.

It's an age old question: "if you knew the day you were going to die, how would you choose to live?". This book gives some answers through the lives of four siblings who do just that.

This is definitely going to be in my top books of the year, if not one of my favourites of all time. Though it wasn't as emotional as I thought it would be, I felt fully invested in the siblings and their lives. I thought about this book when I put it down and savoured every moment when I was reading.

Chloe Benjamin dealt with some tough subjects and I think that they were dealt with realistically. Particularly, as someone who deals with OCD, the author dealt with OCD in a way that I've never seen before; there were quotes that completely encapsulated what it feels like.

Overall I would completely recommend this book. I'm sure there are expects of it that some readers won't enjoy but I loved it and would like to own a physical copy in the future.

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Really enjoyed this novel. It’s quite a quick read and i could jump right in from the very start as the story got going straight from page one.
I liked the way the author broke the book up into stories of each character, and how one passed from one to the other. I particularly enjoyed the stories of Simon and Varya.
The story simple put, is about 4 siblings who when young visit a Fortune teller, who tells them the date of which they will die.
All but one of the dates mean that 3 of the siblings die quite young. The stories tell how each child then lives out the rest of their life with this knowledge and how it changes the decisions they make and the direction they chose to go in.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

What a book! Tapping into the canon of great American literature, from Don DeLillo to Angels in America, this book really encapsulates the feeling of growing up in a changing country- and trying to grapple with a destiny that you might not even want.
Can you change your future? On a hot day in 1969, New York, four siblings visit a fortune teller and get told the dates that they are going to die. What follows is an exploration of what it means to be human, as the four take entirely different roads in life- Simon and Klara, the two youngest, run off to San Francisco to live out their dreams of a liberated youth, whilst Daniel joins the army and Varya, the eldest, eventually tries to cheat death through her groundbreaking work on genetics.
What really shines through here is the sense of authenticity. Chloe Benjamin devotes a good quarter of her book to each of her four siblings, starting with Simon and moving from Klara, to Daniel, to Varya, as the years tick on and the children all meet their ends in different ways.
The book feels meticulously well-researched, and that pays off, from the vibrant, buzzing city of San Francisco to the believable ways in which the characters act, react and bounce off each other. From the family ties they can’t quite shake off to the rebellious need to assert themselves, everything rings true- and Benjamin takes pains to give each of the four a distinctive voice, meaning that the book’s tone shifts and changes as the years tick on and the children become jaded adults.
That does have its downsides, though- even as you’re plunged into the life of the Gold family, with their ghosts, and their painful attempts to connect with each other, the book can drag- especially towards the end, where it feels like Benjamin is running out of steam, having exhausted her most colourful subject material on Simon and Klara’s stories.
By the end, I felt like I was reading more to see what happened than out of any affection for Varya, the most upright and fearful of all the siblings.
But I did enjoy this book: it’s fresh, it’s vibrant and it’s deeply fascinating. Benjamin has a skill for creating well rounded characters that just jump off the page- more please!

Literary magic.

Varya 13, Daniel 11, Klara 9, Simon 7, have heard that there is a psychic living close by who can tell them when they are going to die.

Daniel had overheard two boys discussing the strange lady who had recently moved into their area. He thinks it will be fun to meet this fortune-teller and persuades his siblings to join him. Giving each other Dutch courage, the children manage to slip out of their flat without their mother, Gertie, seeing them. They also manage to bypass their father, Saul’s, leaving Gold Tailor and Dressmaking shop without being spotted.

Klara is the first to be admitted by the psychic, closely followed by Daniel, Simon and finally Varya. What each child is told that day is going to affect their life decisions.

As soon as Klara finishes her final year school exams, she tells the family that she’s leaving to practise magic. Klara has studied since very young under the tutelage of Ilya Hlavacek, an ageing vaudevillian and sleight-of-hand magician. She’d also discovered that the grandmother she’s named after, performed a death-defying feat called The Jaws of Life. She is determined to learn this act and perform it to audiences as part of her magic show. She meets Raj who becomes not only her manager but husband and father of daughter Ruby. They start touring and their fame grows, leading them to perform under the big lights and splendour of Las Vegas.

When Simon hears that Klara is moving to San Francisco, he decides to leave with her. Life at home with Gertie is stifling his true personality and lifestyle. He finds work in a gay bar as a stripper. Because he has no experience as a dancer he is persuaded to take ballet lessons. Here he realises he has the true talent to perform as a ballet dancer.

Daniel knew from a young boy that he wanted to be a doctor. While still a student he meets Mira, an art history student. After their marriage, Daniel’s career sees him joining the Military where he is the Chief Medical Officer at the Military Entrance Processing Station.

Varya works as a scientist. She is part of the team at Drake Institute for Research on Aging. This research involves working with both marmosets and rhesus monkeys. The experiments she’s involved in are trying to prove that restricted diets can help longevity.

We get to meet and see how each sibling deals with the information that the psychic told them. Is life mapped out? Or do we have choices?

How can I be so clinical about this family? Why am I giving you bare facts? It’s simple. This book has a depth to it that can only be experienced by finding somewhere quiet and allowing yourself to be taken on a journey which, one day, could lead to so many different choices?

Chloe Benjamin has woven a storyline which is so powerful and filled with complex characters. Each one with a story so powerful and so deeply linked in the sub-conscious, leaving you wondering whether predictions are real or simply a festering sore hidden deep within the mind, until they burst into the conscious mind, proving them to be true.

This is one of the most beautifully written books filled with protagonists who don’t necessarily want you to like them, but certainly insist that their life-story will ensure that they are memorable.

Treebeard

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

It has taken me a little while to get my thoughts in order to review The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. I was gripped immediately and found it to be a clever, compelling and beautiful novel which gave me pause for thought. It tells the story of four siblings; Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya who, on a hot summer’s day in New York visit a psychic who is able to predict your date of death. The visit marks a turning point in the lives of these children – there is a distinct before and after and The Immortalists examines the impact of this day and questions whether we have a pre-ordained path or if we are the masters of our own fortune.

Told in 4 sections, one for each of the siblings, the book takes us from the 1960s to the present day. I love a book that spans decades and I really enjoyed how time moved through The Immortalists. Simon’s section went by in a blur whilst Varya’s was slow, steady and thoughtful reflecting their very different personalities. My favourite without a shadow of a doubt was Simon’s, I fell in love with his character – he is yearning for freedom and a different life and his story was loud and impactful.

I found this a thought-provoking read about destiny and fate. The four siblings are very different from one another, living their lives in very different ways. Simon escapes to the west coast and becomes a dancer, Klara becomes a magician working in Las Vegas, Daniel joins the army and becomes a surgeon and Varya is a scientist examining how to extend life. Their lives and loves are bittersweet moments for the reader – we know what is coming but we can’t stop it. Chloe Benjamin is skilled at writing four very different people, it was easy to become immersed in the stories and feel an instant connection. I also really enjoyed learning about the Jewish faith and its customs and loved how this kept the children united despite their distance.

Despite being quite a heavy subject matter with moments of magical realism, sadness and despair I found it an easy read and felt uplifted. I was left with the question whether it was better to live a short joyful and colourful life or a long restrained and measured one? It is a philosophical read which I really enjoyed and would highly recommend.

How do you live your life if you know the date of your death?

This is the premise of Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists which sees the four Gold siblings visiting a fortune teller, in the summer of 1969, who gives them all the dates of their deaths. We find out soon that some are sooner than others, with some of the siblings due to die very young.

The tale that ensues follows Simon, Klara, David and Varya each in separate sections in the years which precede their deaths. The story moves through the next 50 years, moving through the eighties to the present day.

The tales are heart-wrenching, exploring everything from the AIDs crisis to alcoholism and depression. The stories really hit home because they tap into the very different ways people see the world and their lives – from perspectives on religion, science and magic, to how we choose to live, and what happiness and success mean. The book forces us to question fate, and the extent to which we determine our own – do the Gold siblings die on the dates the Romany traveller gave them because that was always their fate? Or do they make choices based on this information which lead to their deaths – becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

It is a difficult novel to discuss without giving anything away but as well as moments of pure heart-break, it had some of the most beautiful moments of hope and human connection I have ever read. This novel truly touched me and, while I wept throughout, it was truly enjoyable too.

Different people will likely identify with different siblings and this is something which makes the book all the more impressive. It is a book which you could read several times over in a life time, and read it differently every time. The writing is stunning and the plot compelling; Benjamin makes us care about these siblings and those around them by painting their lives, thoughts and feeling with such vividness that the book conjures and carries a magic of its own that will stay with you long after you put it down.

I received this book as an advanced reader copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review; all opinions are my own.

I decided to read this book based on the description. I thought the idea behind the story sounded original and might be worth a read. I found the book an easy read, and the stories of the siblings were interesting and well written. My only reservation is that I didn't really engage with the characters, so ultimately was not that involved, so I feel that the book was only a partial success for me.

Knowledge of future or even the desire of it can be dangerous. It can alter our decisions and lives in ways that may ultimately lead to the fate we want to escape. The four siblings in ‘The Immortalists’ know the date of their deaths and this information plays a great role in deciding the course of their lives, sometimes unknowingly. The book traces their lives as each day takes them closer to the destiny they’ll either meet or not and makes us believe that “Thoughts have Wings”

Not a Fantasy:

I found the premise very intriguing. The concept is very different and thought-provoking. It forces the reader to contemplate about life, death, and the time in between. It shows us the difference between living and being alive. I was expecting a little fantasy to be honest, given the blurb on Goodreads but it is as steeped in reality as fiction can be. The idea of magic and life after death is there, but it is not concrete and is mostly apportioned to science and the state of mind respectively.

Shifting Sands of Time:

Chloe Benjamin has created a continuous thread that takes us from one life to another, each so different, so unique, that the thread seems to change shades but never breaks. It flows seamlessly from Simon to Klara, from Daniel to Varya, as they struggle with love, loss, and life. I liked this continuation, this timeline pattern, like blocks connecting to complete a jigsaw puzzle. The world inhabited by the Golds shifts accordingly with landlines giving way to flip phones to cutting-edge science. The only constant in their life is Gertie, their mother, who stays strong, even after the hardships life offers her.

“Klara won’t be a woman who is sawed in half or tied in chains – nor will she be rescued or liberated. She’ll save herself. She’ll be the saw.”

Diverse Characters:

The book gives us a chance to see multiple facets of life in a single read. Simon is gay, Klara is a female magician, and Varya is a single & successful scientist. Except for Daniel, all siblings do what would be considered astounding in the latter half of the 20th century. Coming from a traditional Jewish family, these choices were against the expectations set for them by the society and thus left them spurned. Their struggle and sacrifices, regrets and losses are perfectly captured by Chloe in her writing which is full of beautiful metaphors and evokes powerful emotions.

“There now exists a pane of glass between him and his former home, a pane he can see through but not cross”

Dreadful Sense of Loss:

The one thing that did not work for me is that the book made me extremely sad. There is a constant feeling of loss and anticipation of death. At times, I felt despair wrap me like a blanket, and it became difficult to read. This put me in a two-week long reading slump.
Other than that, it is a beautiful and complex book, offering deep insights into the relationships shared by a family.

Recommendations:

In the end, it is all about time and how and with whom we decide to spend it. ‘The Immortalists’ is not just about the Golds. It is about all of us and the regrets we take to our graves. It is a profound read, one you cannot miss but take it slow, one bite at a time.

“The Power of words. They weaseled under door cracks and through keyholes. They hooked into individuals and wormed through generations.”

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for providing me a review copy. All the views are my own.

A lovely contemporary novel in the vein of A LITTLE LIFE - exploring four siblings relationships to each other and to their own lives, it lingered with me long after I put it down.