The Immortalists
If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. In search of one thing they can know for sure, the Gold children–four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness–sneak out to hear their fortunes.
Though the siblings keep the dates secret from one another, their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in 1980s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son, Daniel, seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.
In the vein of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You and Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings, The Immortalists tells a profoundly moving and compulsively readable family love story about life, mortality and the choices we make: is it better to live a long and cautious life, or to burn brightly, but for the shortest time? Beautifully rendered in Benjamin’s lucid, magical prose, The Immortalists is a testament to the power of story, offering a sweeping portrait of a rapidly evolving America through the eyes of one captivating clan.
Chloe Benjamin
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Chloe is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. She lives with her husband and two Maine Coon cats in Madison, WI, where she is at work on a third novel.