Tuesday, April 21, 2020

The Immortalists

I loved The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin.  It came out in 2018 and had been on my want-to-read list for a long time.  It was really a good story.


The Immortalists
In 1969, when the four Gold children were young, a friend of theirs told them about an old lady who could tell them the date of their death.  That summer the children were: Varya, age thirteen; Daniel, age eleven; Klara, age nine; and Simon, age seven.  They saved up their allowances in order to pay the woman to tell their fortunes. And so, one day the children went to the woman's apartment, entered individually, and learned the date of their death.

The book then tells the life of each of the Gold children, in order of their deaths.

A lot of the book resonated with me and my life.  As the oldest of four children, I have lost two of my younger siblings. One of the characters lived and died as one of my brothers did, so that was a bit hard for me to read, but it also brought back lots of good memories. And as Varya thought about the deaths of her siblings, she thought:

"She had lost parts of herself as she lost her siblings."

Very true.

This isn't a sad book, but it is a thoughtful book.  The lives of the four children were interesting. The Gold children's mother would make a good psychological case study!

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