The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin: The Power of Words

In 1969 in New York City, four siblings walk to Hester Street. Varya at thirteen is the eldest. Daniel is eleven, Klara is nine, and Simon is the youngest at seven. Daniel is leading the way. They come totheir father's tailor shop but continue on to an old apartment building. They seek a woman who tells fortunes. She can even tell you the day you will die.

Each child must go into the woman's apartment alone. Each child leaves altered, never to be the same.

Klara is the first to enter the fortune teller's apartment. Next came Daniel, then Simon, and last of all Varya. "What if I change," Varya asks, upset by what she learns. "Then you'd be special. 'Cause most people don't."

In The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin offers readers a book with big ideas that also reads like butter, an addictive story that lures one on into deeper waters. Each sibling's history is revealed with its impact upon the others. Are the choices they make a reflection of what they believe will come?

Simon and Klara are the risk-takers who leave home for San Francisco. Simon embraces an open life as a gay man, becoming a dancer in a gay club. Klara is obsessed with their grandmother, a performer whose specialty was hanging suspended in midair from a rope which she held in her teeth. Klara pursues magic and performance, imitating her grandmother's famous act.

Daniel and Varya take no risks. Daniel leads a solid life as a military doctor and family man. Varya becomes a researcher in longevity, struggling with obsessive disorder, especially about health.

In her struggle to overcome her losses and fears, Varya learns that the power of words can change the past, and the future, and the present.

This book is going to make a big splash.

I will warn that Simon's story, the first to be revealed, includes descriptions of gay sex and the pre-AIDS San Francisco gay scene. Varya's story includes lab animal testing; Benjamin's research into animal testing moved her and she offers a link to the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance.

I received a free book in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Immortalists 
Chloe Benjamin
G. J. Putnam's Sons
On Sale Date January 9, 2018
ISBN: 9780735213180, 0735213186
Hardcover $26.00