The novel begins in Technicolor, with all the eager vitality of youth, and gradually darkens as loss accumulates Daniel becomes a military doctor, Varya a scientist whose academic research with primates investigates the prolonging of life. The two elder siblings stay in New York to take care of their mother.
Mercurial Klara, who will die in her 30s, pursues her lifelong fascination with magic, developing an act that will take her to Las Vegas. Simon, who will die shortly after his 20th birthday, is determined not to risk wasting a moment: “What if the woman on Hester Street is right and the next few years are his last? The mere thought turns his life a different colour it makes everything feel urgent, glittering, precious.” Abandoning their widowed mother, he and Klara escape New York for San Francisco, where Simon comes out and throws himself into the sexual free-for-all of the pre-Aids gay scene. The novel unfolds over four parts, one for each of the siblings in order of their predicted deaths. Not until nine years later, shaken by the unexpected death of their father, do they finally share their dates with one another. The oldest, Varya, is 13, the youngest, Simon, only seven, but it is 11-year-old Daniel who hears about the woman on Hester Street who can predict the exact date you will die, and nine-year-old Klara who summons up the courage to knock on her door. Something, it seems, “is happening to everyone but them”. Less predictable is just how engaging this bittersweet novel turns out to be.īenjamin’s story starts in a sweltering New York apartment during the summer of 1969.
Given the catchy Hollywood-style pitch, it is little surprise that the book has been snapped up by publishers across the globe and a TV adaptation is already in the works. I f you knew the day you were going to die, how would you choose to live? This is the question at the heart – and on the cover – of American author Chloe Benjamin’s second novel, The Immortalists (her first, The Anatomy of Dreams, was not published in the UK).
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