Chloe Benjamin
Penguin Publishing Group, January 2018
Chloe Benjamin’s newest novel, The Immortalists, starts with an interesting premise: the Gold children—Simon, Klara, Daniel, and Varya—are each told by a fortune teller the date of their death. The story then follows each sibling as they decide how they are going to proceed with the rest of their lives with this information. The novel is an exploration on the power of belief; the myriad ways of that what we believe of ourselves, our faiths, our families, friends, and lovers affects the course of our lives. Benjamin does an excellent job of portraying the complex bonds of family and the layers of sometimes conflicting emotions that can exist between siblings. However, it does feel like much of the character development is spent on the two youngest siblings, Simon and Klara, and their unconventional choices that lead them away from home. The stories of the eldest two seem to be more a reaction and a consequence of the choices made by others and less by their own motivations, which makes them paler by comparison. Perhaps this was by intention, but the lack of depth in their stories is disappointing; even the dutiful can be extraordinary, and more development in their themes would have rounded out the novel and given it more balance. Regardless, Benjamin has created a fully fleshed out world that is worth visiting, and will have you thinking about your own beliefs for long afterwards
