I have a lot of mixed feelings about The Immortalists. The premise is intriguing: four young siblings living in NYC in 1969 go to a fortune-teller who tells them when they are going to die. What follows are their life stories up until the moment of their death, so we see how their life choices were affected by the information they got from the fortune teller. Basically, it's the old fate vs. agency story with some family drama in the mix.

This book lacks cohesion. It reads like a series of vignettes only loosely bound by the family ties. The ups and downs in writing were difficult to deal with and I was considering quitting for the majority of the middle part. Some of it was really disappointing to the point of absurdity (the end of Daniel's story).

Things only got better at the end of the final chapter when writing gets much better, but by then it's too late.
Of all the main characters in the book, I only cared for Klara, whose end was not convincing to me. However, the end of the novel was an hommage to Klara in a way, so Benjamin redeemed herself a little bit there.

The story didn't really live up to its premise. It opened a lot of interesting questions, which is fine if you want to discuss this in a book club, but the way it was executed was disappointing.

Overall, for a book that comes with so many trigger warnings, I'd expect more payoff. I was especially taken aback by the anti-Roma sentiment repeated throughout the book by multiple characters, the unnecessarily graphic sex references in the first story that didn't add anything to the narrative, the experiments on animals and the superficial treatment of suicide. ( )

A 3.5 for me - some sections I really enjoyed some fell a bit more flat. I think I’d heard so much about this before reading it that it could never live up to the hype but I did like it and would recommend.

The premise: how would your life turn out if you knew the exact date of your death? It’s really interesting to contemplate. Could that information be real? Would you make yourself succumb to that end date just because you thought it was real? Could you ignore it? Would you tell people? Would you suppress it?

This book explores what happens to four siblings when they receive their death dates as children.



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I am torn by this book, to me, a great number of people love the book yet I found it a bit slow to start. I did enjoy the characters and their interactions with each other. If you step back you are able to almost clearly picture pieces of the life these characters are living.

Chloe Benjamin colors a vivid picture and allows the reader to enjoy the ambiance of the story. I give the book 3 stars. ( )

t's 1969 and the four Gold children, oldest 13 hear of a mystical lady on the Lower East Side of NY who can foretells the day one will die. "The Immortalists" is the story of these four siblings, Simon, Varya, Daniel and Klara as they grow up and come to terms with what their "day" is. Does the knowledge of when one going to die impact the choices they make that lead to that outcome? Everyone wrestles with mortality, but what does knowing the exact day of your death due to your psychological outlook, the life choices you make?

The novel is structured around each character in the order of the year they die, earliest to latest. I loved the premise of Chloe Benjamin's novel and was fully immersed through the first half of the book, following the lives of Simon and Klara. They were the most fully realized and developed of the characters and the existential question raised by Benjamin's book, did knowing the date of their death lead to a set of decisions that resulted in fate being realized or was it just fate. I felt the momentum and connection with the characters started to flag midway through Daniel's story. While there were moments of brilliance, particularly the Thanksgiving visit from Varya's widower and daughter, there were some plot twists that were forced and left the final part of that "chapter" trite and predictable. By the end of the novel, I was a bit disappointed, for what started out with so much promise ended with a little bit of a whimper. In my mind, "The Immortalists" may have been stronger structurally if it centered on no more than three siblings instead of the four.

I'm somewhat torn between giving the book three or four stars, but lean toward four given the strength of the first half to two thirds of a tale well told about one of those timeless questions --- What if you knew exactly when you were going to die? ( )

I couldn't finish this. The male gaze was too strong. I should have known from the very first page, when literally (literally!) the second paragraph is describing the breasts of a 13 year old child. It doesn't get better. The author is a woman and it is so depressing to think this is what she thinks about children (or thinks readers want). There are more examples and I couldn't get past them. Not recommended. ( )