Books
Book review: The Immortalists
A youthful quartet whose parts begin at the ending
February 2, 2018 13:57
A youthful quartet whose parts begin at the ending
February 2, 2018 13:57It’s a premise that in the wrong hands could come across as gimmicky, so it’s a testament to Chloe Benjamin’s skill as a writer that The Immortalists is such a captivating, moving read. The story of four Jewish siblings who while away a summer’s day with a visit to a Lower East Side psychic, the novel presents the implications of being told as a child the exact date on which you are going to die.
“The summer of 1969 — it seems something is happening to everything but them,” writes Benjamin of the sweltering day the Gold children attempt to meddle in forces beyond their control. Around them, Woodstock and Stonewall are changing history; for the Golds, it is the last summer before adolescence necessitates that they cease being a unit.
After the first sibling’s story is told — that of Simon, only seven when the novel opens, a lost soul who finds a home in San Francisco’s flourishing gay community just as Aids begins to rear its ugly head — Benjamin makes clear that the Gold quartet will probably not be able to escape their fates.
Death will come; the question is how and why and, more pertinently, how it will shape their lives before then.
