Book Review: The Immortalists

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

Chloe Benjamin’s novel The Immortalists is a beautifully written, heartbreaking story that explores a number of themes that are fundamental to our existence. Or, more aptly put, it explores themes that are fundamental to the end of our existence.

One of my good friends (if you’re reading this, you know who you are!) loves to read books about death, and in particular, books about the way people live their lives when they know they are dying. She has told me that these books help her learn what people value when the end is near, which in turn informs her own priorities and approach to life.

For years, I was impressed by this but too afraid of the subject to follow in her footsteps. However, in 2020, I found myself thinking about death a lot more than I had in the past. I’m sure many others did too. The pandemic caused (and continues to cause) an unfathomable number of deaths, and just recently, on a micro, personal level, my family had to put our very old dog down. A concept I was once so terrified of became, if not less terrifying, less unavoidable.

So, I finally picked up The Immortalists, a book that has been on my TBR list for a couple of years now (admittedly, knowing vaguely what it was about, I was always too nervous to actually start reading it). The novel tells the story of the four Gold siblings who, as children, visit a psychic who predicts the day each of them will die. We then see how that knowledge — whether it is true or not — affects the choices they make, their relationships with each other, and their psyches up until the days the psychic predicted would be their last.

This fascinating, and also frightening, premise leads to all sorts of questions. Are our lives predetermined? Or do we actively carry out our own fate just by believing it’s predetermined? In other words, is fate only fate because we believe it is and make it so?

And what about that knowledge the four Gold siblings gain from the psychic? Is it better to know when you’ll die, so you can make the most of your life up until that point, or live in blissful ignorance, protected from the shadow of death?

Most importantly for me, a person who has always been very afraid of death, The Immortalists also explores how we, as humans, can bear to live with our own and loved ones’ demise.

In sum, I’d say that this book is an important one, but it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s a sad book. There were several times when I wanted to put it down. Yet, the Gold siblings kept drawing me back to hear their stories. And in doing so, they made me reflect on how I want to live my own life, and made the scary but inevitable topic of death feel a little more approachable.

You can buy The Immortalists here.

Rating: 3 stars

Rating Scale:
5 Stars: I love this book!!!
4 Stars: Pretty good
3 Stars: Good
2 Stars: Not for me
1 Star: Truly dislike