Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
This is not a new novel, but a book I picked up recently* and felt an urgent compulsion to tell others about it. The Immortalists is a novel that is completely immersive, a book to become lost within its adhesive narrative. While trapped between its covers, I lost all sense of time and place as I navigated myself through the lives [and deaths] of the Gold family.
The novel’s hook is the intriguing premise contained within the concise prologue ‘The House on Hester Street, 1969”. Four siblings in Manhattan’s East-Side covertly visit a Rishika [a Seer], from the Romani-Gypsy community. They do not tell their parents Saul and Gertie Gold who are devout followers of the Jewish faith. The mysterious Rishika is believed to be able to tell them the exact dates of their deaths. The eldest Varya [aged 13] is relieved to hear that she will live to a ripe old age, but her younger siblings Daniel [aged 11], Klara [aged 9] and Simon [aged 7] are told less encouraging news. The eldest Daniel and Varya, do not believe the Rishka’s prophecies, but their scepticism is not shared by Klara nor [especially] seven-year old Simon, who tearfully advises his siblings that he was told by the Seer, he would die young.
And that’s the set-up.
As the children grow, it becomes apparent that Simon who was supposed to take over their Father Saul’s Tailory business has other ideas. The book is separated into four sections, each detailing the lives that each of the siblings follow. The sections are adhered to an era, having the shadow of the Rishka’s prediction hanging over them.
Simon with his sister Klara venture to San Francisco, much to their older siblings disappointment. Simon becomes a dancer, dazzled by the carefree hedonistic life he comes to embrace – a far cry from the strict regimes of a middle-class Jewish upbringing. Klara follows the steps of her grandmother, dazzled by the allure of the stage, of magic tricks, grease-paint and the love of an applauding crowd. She is soon dragged from San Francisco’s Castro district to the bright lights of Las Vegas.
Studded into the lives of Simon and Klara are glittering supporting characters, like Robert the former football player turned ballet dancer, and Raj Chamar, a poor Indian-American trying to find a path away from poverty, as well as the mysterious policeman turned FBI Agent, Eddie Donoghue.
Soon it is time to learn of the fate of Daniel and Varya, the two eldest Gold siblings, and how their life paths unfurled - as unlike Simon and Klara, they held no credence in the Rishika’s prophecies.
The narrative is so well constructed, with characters that pulse with life [and death], and events at times expel the air from the reader’s lungs, and stop them dead in their tracks [pun intended].
It’s a novel that is thought-provoking, shocking and emotionally buffeting - that I found myself anchored into the narrative, as if clinging to a Frigate battling an Atlantic storm.
It is part mystery novel, and part an existential examination of what it means to live and to die, the role of fate but much, much more.
I’ll be thinking of this narrative for many years, pondering the significance of what the story reveals about our lives, and also the anticipation of our deaths, especially the question “how would we live our lives if we knew the hour of our death?”
Extraordinary.
*Editorial note: A huge thank you to Maxim Jakubowski and his September book review column “To The Max” at Crimetime. I became aware of this extraordinary novel when Maxim revealed his book of the month to be Chloe Benjamin’s UNDER STORY.
Opening his review - “US author Chloe Benjamin’s previous novel THE IMMORTALISTS was a moving family saga with a fascinating speculative overtone about a trio [actually a quartet] of kids who are given the opportunity to know the time when they will die, and can elect to know or not, and how over a lengthy period it affects the way they live and love in subtle ways.”
It intrigued me sufficiently that I ordered The Immortalists [2018] on the back of Maxim’s paragraph. After finishing the novel, I quickly ordered Chloe Benjamin’s two other novels -The Anatomy of Dreams [2014 in America, 2018 UK] as well as her new work Under Story [2026].
