Four New York siblings visit a Romany fortune teller during
the hot summer of 1969. A word of mouth rumour, she is reputed to be able to
tell you the exact date of your death. Daniel, Klara, Varya and Simon, all under
ten (ish) the Gold children scrape together their pocket money to visit this mysterious
woman, drawn by their desire to Know.
They are fascinated and horrified by what they learn. Torn
between dismissing it as nonsense and clinging onto the superstition,
concealing their dates from one another and never mentioning it until adulthood…the
Gold siblings are burdened with a knowledge that hangs over every hour of every
day, a knowledge that threatens to make their choices for them and forces them
to make the most of every opportunity
.
The book scrolls through the lives of the four Gold siblings
in the order in which they die. We start with Simon, youngest Gold and heir to
the family’s drapery business. Knowing that he will die young, he runs away to
San Francisco with his wayward sister Klara and throws himself head first into
living fast; the famous Gay Scene, night clubs, drugs, ballet, sex and hedonism
and eventually romantic love. His date turns out to be true.
Essentially estranged from the rest of the family through a mixture
of distance and flighty waywardness, Klara dedicates herself to becoming an
illusionist and vaudevillian like her Hungarian grandmother. Perfecting her
signature death-defying stunt, the Jaws of Life, the trick is that there is no
trick, just strength and will and guts. Her secret shame is the guilt she feels
at being the one that convinced Simon to come to San Francisco, she feels
responsible for his death and that guilt plays a large part in the road to her
death.
After Klara's death, unsure if her unknown date was accurate or not, Daniel, the sensible Army doctor sets off to
find the fortune teller- gradually becoming more and more obsessed with making her pay for the deaths of his
siblings. This section ends with a slightly out-of character Thriller--esque showdown...The final Gold standing, a genetic researcher and OCD sufferer Varya is the last
to narrate, the only one granted the gift of old age. Her life’s work is to
extend the natural human life, but the price to pay is that her (long) life is fairly miserable,
a grey existence of controlled calories and hermetic environments. Like her
sister she too is defying death, but through a microscope rather than on stage. She's probably the hardest Gold to warm to- somewhat passionless and calculated, she resented her siblings their freedom and now finds herself without any of them.
I love multi-narrative books and books about siblings, so this
ticked a lot of boxes for me- I loved the themes of self-fulfilling prophecy versus
fate, how knowing what’s around the corner might influence and affect the
decisions we make and the direction that our lives take. It’s fairy usual to
discuss what we’d do if this was our last day on Earth, and we’re all familiar
with the saying of “Being here for a good time, not a long time”, and this book
asks whether we’d live differently, make different choices, take risks, set
goals, try harder if we knew when we were going to die.
It’s concerned too with the idea of free will, and whether
by setting a date in stone and obsessing over it, a person inadvertently fulfils
these prophecies with their obsession, or whether it is in fact pre-determined,
and the only unusual factor is the awareness of the date, a date and an event
that cannot be deviated from…
The Immortalists a wonderful story about family and loss and choices,
and how we decide on our life’s priorities. Is it better to live a short life
full of joy and love and impact? Or is it better to live a long, safe life,
controlled and protected. The dynamics of the family as they grow apart and are
forced back together, a smaller circle every time is heart breaking and relatable
and tragic. They are all so tortured by the awareness of their own failures;
failure to act, failure to reach out, failure to try and understand. People are strange creatures and whatever we choose, we can never really win.
Very much recommended.
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