Book Review - Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Published by: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication Date: January 9th, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★
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On a hot summer day in 1969 the four Gold siblings, ranging in age from seven to thirteen, embark on an adventure. Daniel, age eleven, has heard rumors of a woman on Hester Street who will tell you the day that you will die. They have combined their allowances into a bag and head off in search of the woman. For an epic quest she is found quite easily, only they must each face her alone. They never speak of what they learned except once, nine years later, after their father's funeral, when they will be together for the last time. Klara dares her siblings to reveal when they will die. Varya has a long life ahead of her, Daniel will only life to forty-eight, Klara to thirty-one, Simon just says it's when he's young. It is clear that all of them have spent the last nine years dwelling on their fates and this knowledge will forever shape their lives consciously and unconscionably. Simon, youngest sibling and soonest to die, has his life laid out for him. Varya and Daniel went off to college, Klara has always had a weird desire to be a magician, but Simon, Simon is the last sibling at home, taking care of their mother and the family business. But Klara knows that his fate is weighing on him so she offers him an alternative, follow her to San Francisco and live the life he was meant to lead now. He throws himself into dance and hedonism and dies four years later from AIDS, on the day he was told he would die. This shakes the siblings considerably, but seeing as they didn't know his exact date, they can't lend too much credence to it. It's Klara who makes sure her death date is right to continue the augury. Is there any chance for Daniel or Varya to avoid their fates? Or were they given self-fulfilling prophecies? And is it better to burn bright and flame out than exist without really living?

The undeserved success of The Immortalists is why I will never like populist literature. This book wanted to be everything to everyone and failed because the vision and the execution were worlds apart. There is no unifying style, first we have Armistead Maupin shorthand, then magic, then vengeance, then Michael Crichton, yes, I get it, the siblings are vastly different, but a book needs to feel cohesive, and this doesn't. Could we perhaps have had one narrator? An overseer or omniscient being, perhaps one of the siblings that unifies all their stories, not shatters it. Klara is the only one whose voice didn't feel like nails on a chalkboard. She was mystical, magical, she could have been our narrator. After all she believes she can hear Simon after his death, why doesn't she carry the narrative weight? Because as this stands, the only way to really fix The Immoralists would be if each sibling had their own book instead of some shorthand story that is painted in such broad strokes that it doesn't just verge on but is stereotypical. And that is why I loath this book. Take away the fact that the storylines are nothing special and you see that Chloe Benjamin is a lazy writer. She wants readers to connect to a time instead of to a character. She uses cultural shorthand, Forest Gumping her way through the 20th century, so that us readers will connect to their own nostalgia of that time versus bothering to create characters who the readers can connect to on their own. I mean, these siblings literally can not have been there for all these events. Oh, the day they found the fortuneteller was the day of the Stonewall Riots? And the day Simon hooked up with his boyfriend was the day Harvey Milk was shot? Oh, they were listening to Paul Simon's Graceland? Give me some more rampant consumerism in-between cultural touchstones why don't you? Because I know Benjamin has to be shilling for the drug companies and I know she wants some Milwaukee's pickles! She is supposedly now a Wisconsinite after all but does she actually know that Devil's Lake isn't between Chicago and Madison but further north? And that no one has ever referred to Door County as a collection of islands.