The Immortalists

Chloe Benjamin

Jan 2018 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post • NPR • Entertainment Weekly • Real Simple • Marie Claire • New York Public Library • LibraryReads • The Skimm • Lit Hub • Lit Reactor 

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“A captivating family saga.”—The New York Times Book Review

“This literary family saga is perfect for fans of Celeste Ng and Donna Tartt.”—People Magazine (Book of the Week)

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

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.

The 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; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.

Ratings and reviews

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin is a fascinating study in the nature of young people faced with the truncation of their future. Most of us go through life thinking of our life as a limitless string of experiences, but for those of us who understand our mortality, it can look very different. For the young, to know their fate ahead of time is to have great power, however it can certainly be damning, as was the case here. Benjamin's writing style is gripping and beautiful, I am very much looking forward to her next work, whenever that might be. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wonders if their life is meaningless. I also love the cover art, it was what attracted me to the work in the first place.

a preview on BookishFirst: The summary and premise drew me in, but the beginning seemed to jump all over the place. So many names were introduced, and were hard to keep track of. Since it's being told partially from the childrens' points of view, couldn't the parents be referred to as 'mom' and 'dad' instead of their first names? Perhaps it smooths out as it continues, but I found it hard to not feel a little lost, and it's only the first part of the book! I wonder if the author will come back to "the seer" character at all? I would love to learn more about her, her history, to see how she fits in to the predictions that she gave the four Gold children in 1969. If the book does smooth out, I'd be interested in continuing to read about this family. 1/27/2018

Strange and Creepy! I will admit I had some misgivings about reading The Immortalists. This type of story, here is the day you die, always disturbs me. After reading this one I can say, it was no exception. I was indeed disturbed. Is it true that you get the results you expect to get? Is there such a concept as fate or destiny or pre-determined whatever? Either of these factors could have been in play here. Then again, there is one more possible explanation. It was all a coincidence. Each life followed an arc that inevitably led to a particular result. But, why? My major thought after reading this book is just why this result? The Immortalists is a debatable smorgasbord of why this or why that. It's an interesting, albeit disturbing, novel.

About the author

Chloe Benjamin is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Immortalists. Her first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. She lives with her husband in Madison, WI.