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 mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.
The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s 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; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.
A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
This is one of those books I saw at a bookstore, and seemed really interesting, so I instantly went to go to the library to go borrow and read it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite what I expected, but I think in the end it was still an interesting read.
The Immortalists has an interesting premise. There is a lady who can tell you the exact date of your death. What happens to your life after you know this date? And is the lady even telling the truth or just a fraud? This is the conundrum that the Gold children face after meeting the woman one fateful day as kids. Each child grows up with the weight of their upcoming death on their shoulders, and develop in different ways armed with this knowledge. Just how is one’s life affected by this knowledge?
The Gold children were certainly interesting and not all immediately likeable. In fact, I would say in general they are not likeable, though they are certainly human and have their relatable flaws. Some of them are immediately more likeable than others but it is interesting to see how they all reacted to the dates of their death. Each character was unique and had their own quirks, and it was interesting to see how they all developed, and how each child’s story related to the others as well. However, overall I’d say the children were not the most likeable, so that can be hard for the average reader.
The plot was generally decent. Each child had their own story that was the story of their own struggles in their life, but also with the knowledge of their death date in mind as well. The story follows the lives of the five children, but also in chronological order of time. The way the story is woven together as one long narrative over the lives of the five children was very well done. It was hard to see at first what was being done, but I was more intrigued after I was able to understand how the story was coming together.
The themes of destiny were of course explored and something that really made me think throughout the entire book. Could one simply not just protect themselves until that fateful day to prevent the prophecy from coming true. On the other hand is it really living if you just avoid your fate? And does it mean you’re invincible before your allotted death date? Just what does it mean to know when you will die? How much of the destiny is really just your own choice? I definitely had these questions swirling inside my mind the entire time and I think my favourite part of the book was just the way it addressed this. So I won’t spoil anything, but I thought the way that the book explored this and the message that I felt like I got from the book was certainly satisfying.
Overall Recommendations
The Immortalists had the most interesting premise that just made me have to pick it up: what would you do if you knew the day you would die? Would you live trying to avoid it? Or live happily knowing that you have until that day? This is a story that takes place over the years, through the eyes of the Gold children as they grow up knowing their death dates. Full of intrigue and unsolvable conundrums of life batter each child, how will they navigate it? Find out in this intriguing story about seizing life vs. destiny, and what it could all mean knowing when the end would come.
Down the Rabbit Hole 