The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin is a book about life and death, and the choices in between. The story begins with four children who have already lost the only father that they ever knew, and then intrigued by death, seek out a fortune teller of sorts who would tell them the dates of their own deaths. Interwoven throughout their lives is the dates that this lady on Hestler street gives them. Also knitted into the lives of these siblings is a strange man with orange hair, and a badge.
Gertie, and Saul are a pair trying to raise their four children Varya, Simon, Klara, and Daniel to respect the Jewish traditions past down to them. Going to a seer such as the one on Hestler street would be forbidden, which is why no one tells their mother, and may be why they don’t even share the dates of their deaths with each other. Their father dies, which may make them more curious about their own deaths, but do these dates truly come to fruition, or is it all in their minds?
The Immortalists circles the themes of choices and death, which leads each child in how they choose to live their lives, and shows how the deaths around them affect each individual. Another theme seen throughout the book is magic. Klara loves magic, and wants to use it in order to change people’s lives. As her story unfurls, she works on many skills including being able to influence the choices that other people make. While doing a card trick for example, she can suggest what card someone will pick by using suggestion techniques. In many ways the gypsy woman from Hestler street is the same. She suggestively influences the siblings choices by telling them the date of their deaths.
***SPOILERS APPROACHING!*** KEEP READING AT YOUR OWN RISK!***
As aforementioned Gertie, and Saul have four children with the youngest being Daniel. After his father’s death, Daniel decides that he wants to get away from home, and have a chance to live his life, after all the seer gave him an extremely short time to live it with the date of his demise. When his sister Klara graduates high school, and decides to move to further her magic career, and he convinces her to move to San Francisco where he could be free to live his life the way that he wants, as a homosexual, something that he could never do while living with his mother. He lives out the rest of his life in a time where being gay was dangerous as AIDS was a huge epidemic that most people knew very little about.
After losing her brother, Klara continues to perform magic where she falls in love with a man who wants to take her show to the next level. She only wants her magic to affect people’s lives, where as Raj, her love, wants fame and fortune. As mental illness creeps into her mind, she has a child with this man, and they take their show on the road. As her predicted date approaches, they finally get their big break, but is it really the break that Klara wants?
With the deaths of his siblings weighing heavily in his mind, Simon lives a seemingly normal life with his wife Mira. As he is suspended from his life as medical doctor who clears young men and women to serve in the military for not allowing more people to put their lives at risk, he begins to question what his purpose in life is. As he quanders his life choices, Eddie, a police officer makes another appearance. Simon discovers how Eddie knew his brother and sister before they died, and he has something to share with Simon about this mysterious fortune teller that they met with years ago.
The departure of all of her younger siblings affects Marya in a whole other way. She dedicates her life in discovering how to prolong life. In doing so, she has forgotten to actually live hers. She cares for her mother, but otherwise, she goes to great lengths to live as long as she can, and to make sure that others can as well. This story ends with shining a light on how the decision so many years ago to hear the dates of their deaths has affected Varya, and her siblings, and leads to where she must decide if it is better to live a long life or one that is actually worth living.