"The Immortalists" by Chloe Benjamin

In this novel we follow four Gold siblings, Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon. It is 1969, the Golds are a Jewish American family living in New York. One day the four kids decide to visit a fortune teller who is said to predict the exact day the person will die. At the time they visit her, the youngest, Simon, is only seven years old, next is Clara - nine, Daniel is eleven and and the oldest, Varya is thirteen and a half. The woman sees them one at a time and each of them gets the date of their death. What follows after this are four separate stories in which we follow each individual sibling as they make decisions that ultimately lead to fulfillment of each of their respective prophesies.

Each story is heartbreaking in its own way. Simon lives his life at a neck-breaking speed, fiercely and greedily. Klara seems to be trapped in her own mind where reality and magic blur and make living unbearably frightening and painful. Daniel is rational and methodical, but even he at his core is unable to dismiss the prophesy the fortune teller made and snaps at the very end. Finally, Varya, who was told she would live to be eighty-eight, is wrecked by guilt that she is meant to outlive her siblings and ends up painfully watching as all them one after another slip away.

It appears that the Gold children all believed the prophecy with childhood trust and proceeded to live the rest of their lives in a way that made the prophecy come true. So the novel poses the question: is there such a thing as the gift of fortune telling, or are our deeply rooted beliefs and fears drive us to live in a way that makes fortune telling seem real.

Overall, I gave this book 4 our of 5 stars. It is fast-paced, thought provoking and well-written. Trigger warnings: suicide, explicit sex scenes, animal suffering.

I received an advanced review copy of this book from NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review.