2017 book 179

Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists
This book centers on four Russian-Jewish siblings in 1969 New York who go to see a fortune teller who tells each of them the day they will die, and then the story follows each of them until their fateful days. I enjoyed parts of each of these stories, primarily Klara's struggles to be taken seriously as a magician, but I found both her ending and her elder brother's to be beyond implausible, and young Simon, a gay man in early 80s San Francisco, was largely a cliche. Benjamin attempts to end things on a hopeful note with eldest Varya, but I found this whole book to be kind of a bummer. Parts of it were really interesting, but I felt like it was trying too hard to be a Serious Literary Work Saying Something Profound About The Human Condition. B.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in January.