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WORK TITLE: The Immortalistst
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 2-Nov
WEBSITE: https://www.chloebenjaminbooks.com/
CITY: Madison
STATE: WI
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Agent, Margaret Riley King, mking@wmeentertainment.com https://www.chloebenjaminbooks.com/contact/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born November 2, in San Francisco, CA; married.
EDUCATION:Vassar College, graduated; University of Wisconsin, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
AWARDS:Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award, for The Anatomy of Dreams.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Chloe Benjamin is a writer based in Madison, Wisconsin. She holds degrees from Vassar College and the University of Wisconsin.
The Anatomy of Dreams
In 2014, Benjamin released her first book, The Anatomy of Dreams. The volume’s protagonist and narrator is Sylvie. When she is close to finishing college, she has an unexpected visit from her high-school boyfriend, Gabe, who persuades her to take part in an experiment on lucid dreaming. Gabe is assisting Adrian Keller in conducting the experiment. Gabe and Sylvie get back together, but the lucid dreams Sylvie continues to have complicate their lives and friendships.
Benjamin’s The Anatomy of Dreams received mixed reviews. Writing on the Washington Independent Review of Books website, Nick Wolven remarked: “Her writing, certainly, is anything but lurid—brought to such a journalistic polish that some passages, especially those giving background on sleep research, have the cool clarity of a highbrow magazine article. Surely we can’t complain too loudly if a writer avoids the cheap pleasures of suspense in favor of a literary interest in memory and regret. (And the final chapters here, for you Paris Review readers, are satisfyingly wistful). Yet I sometimes longed for this novel about the study of dreams to have more of the chills and suspense.” “The twist at the end is hardly shocking enough to excuse the slow buildup. Though Benjamin can turn a nice phrase, this is an uneven first novel,” commented a Kirkus Reviews critic. However, Meredith Turits, contributor to the Bustle website, asserted: “The Anatomy of Dreams is an ambitious novel that puts Benjamin on display as a writer with talent—and shows that she has plenty more in the tank. The novel itself is an easy read, yet not always simple to digest. A book like that is, in ways, a dream.” “The plot works best when the thriller elements focus on the love story,” noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The same reviewer described the book as “a sly, promising, and ambitious debut.” Kristine Huntley, critic in Booklist, predicted: “The mounting tension … will definitely keep the pages of this taut psychological exploration turning.”
The Immortalists
In her second novel, The Immortalists, Benjamin tells the story of four siblings: Simon, Klara, Varya, and Daniel Gold. As children, a psychic predicts the dates of each of their deaths. The novel follows them through the following decades to determine how the predictions play out. Klara and Simon both settle in San Francisco, where Klara becomes a professional magician and Simon a ballet dancer. Daniel joins the army and serves as a doctor. He marries and moves to Kingston, New York. Varya becomes a scientist studying longevity. In 2006, Daniel discovers the truth about the psychic he and his siblings visited and determines to find her.
Benjamin told BookPage writer, Alice Cary: “The Immortalists felt like the book that I was always meant to write. … If I died now, at least I would have written this. I don’t think I’ll ever have a book like this again.” In an interview with Mark Rubinstein, contributor to the Huffington Post website, Benjamin stated: “It’s fair to say the premise of the book derives from my own neuroses and anxieties. The uncertainty of life itself and our lack of control over much that awaits us, have gnawed at me for years. These preoccupations came together in this novel in the form of three children who encountered a fortune-teller, and each one’s story slowly unfolds.”
“Benjamin’s … premise situates her novel in magical territory, but the spell doesn’t quite work,” remarked a writer on the Kirkus Reviews website. Other assessments of the book were more favorable. Bob Duffy, critic on the Washington Independent Review of Books website, suggested: “In the siblings’ tales, author Benjamin shines a subtle light on the bonds of kinship and familial love, counter-balanced by the freedom, or willingness, to choose one’s own path. The Immortalists is a rich and rewarding novel, sure to rank among the very best of 2018’s crop, and one to be re-read and savored for years to come.” Reviewing the book on the National Public Radio website, Jean Zimmerman commented: “The reader will likely be thoroughly taken by the world of the Gold siblings, in all its shades of brilliant color. It’s not a totally comfortable realm, since we know all too well how this tale’s going to end, but getting there is lovely.” Referring to Benjamin, Constance Grady, contributor to the Vox website, stated: “At her best, she succeeds in infusing her scenes with a kind of worn-in depth that keeps the reader grounded and aware of they are as Benjamin hurtles us from 1969 to the present.” Referring to the characters, a Publishers Weekly critic wrote: “In Benjamin’s expert hands their story becomes a moving meditation on fate, faith, and the family ties that alternately hurt and heal.” “Benjamin has created mesmerizing characters and richly suspenseful predicaments in this profound and glimmering novel,” asserted Donna Seaman in Booklist.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, August 1, 2014, Kristine Huntley, review of The Anatomy of Dreams, p. 12; December 15, 2017, Donna Seaman, review of The Immortalists, p. 87.
BookPage, January, 2018, Alice Cary, “Only the Good Die Young,” author interview, p. 11.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2014, review of The Anatomy of Dreams.
Library Journal, June 15, 2017, review of The Immortalists, p. 11a.
Publishers Weekly, April 7, 2014, review of The Anatomy of Dreams, p. 38; October 23, 2017, review of The Immortalists, p. 61.
ONLINE
Bustle, https://www.bustle.com/ (September 17, 2014), Meredith Turits, review of The Anatomy of Dreams.
Chloe Benjamin Website, https://www.chloebenjaminbooks.com (March 20, 2018).
Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (January 9, 2018), Mark Rubinstein, author interview.
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (July 17, 2017), review of The Immortalists.
National Public Radio Online, https://www.npr.org/ (January 9, 2018), Jean Zimmerman, review of The Immortalists.
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (January 19, 2018), Tina Jordan, review of The Immortalists.
Popsugar, https://www.popsugar.com/ (January 8, 2018), Chelsea Adelaine Hassler, author interview.
Vox, https://www.vox.com/ (Januray 24, 2018), Constance Grady, review of The Immortalists.
Washington Independent Review of Books, http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/ (August 21, 2014), Nick Wolven, review of The Anatomy of Dreams; (January 16, 2018), Bob Duffy, review of The Immortalists.
BIO
DSC_6045.jpg
Chloe Benjamin is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Immortalists, a #1 Indie Next Pick, #1 Library Reads pick, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, Amazon Best Book of the Month, and an iBooks Favorite.
Her first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was long listed for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Her work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Chloe is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin. She lives with her husband in Madison, WI.
Chloe Benjamin Explains the Evolution of The Immortalists, One of 2018's Best New Books
January 8, 2018 by CHELSEA ADELAINE HASSLER
First Published: December 21, 2017
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When I first got a copy of The Immortalists earlier this year, I absolutely devoured it — and several months later, I found myself opening up the novel once again, desperate to relive the narrative that unfolds across the book's 352 pages.
The underlying premise of Chloe Benjamin's second book is centered on four siblings who forever alter their destiny on one fateful day in 1969 and how, after learning the supposed dates of each of their individual deaths from a traveling psychic, they choose to live out the rest of their lives. The story spans decades and travels from coast to coast, all while giving a glimpse into four tremendously different worlds that happen to be linked not just by blood but by superstition.
I spoke with Benjamin by phone in advance of the novel's official Jan. 9 release, and our wide-ranging conversation — edited and condensed for clarity — appears below.
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POPSUGAR: What was the inspiration behind the book? Had you met someone like the fortune teller on Hester Street?
Chloe Benjamin: I wish I had a really good inception story, but I usually live with ideas for a while before I start a book. And that's in part because I just don't have a lot of ideas. I think that's why I'm not a short-story writer; I have maybe one idea every five years. So it's kind of hard for me to remember the exact seed, because I would continually add things on over time as I thought more and more about the siblings. I remember that I had this initial idea about children going to see a fortune teller, and I think it just comes from my own neuroses, really. Now that you've read the book, it won't surprise you to hear that I have anxiety about a number of things — but particularly knowledge, uncertainty, and loss. And of course, there's no greater uncertainty than the fact that we don't know how long we have in the world. So I thought that that would be an interesting way to explore these questions about seeking knowledge. Is knowledge helpful? How much is too much? And so on.
PS: What does your writing process look like on a day-to-day basis?
CB: It has changed a bit, because while I was working on this book I was working at a day job and then after the book sold I was able to write full time and that, obviously, is a huge gift and luxury that I'm still sort of finding my rhythms in. But generally, I get up, I try to write from maybe 9 to 12 or 9 to 1. When I was at my day job, I would get up early before work and write and then I would do the 9 to noon schedule on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because I worked Monday through Thursday. So that was really nice, and I kind of knew that I had the second half of the week to be my writing workweek. Now I can use the afternoons for more business-y things or research. I find that I can't go eight hours in that mind frame. I can't maintain that level of creative quality over a full day. So that's kind of been the transition that I'm learning as I've moved into this phase.
PS: You mentioned research, and I'm curious: how did you do all the research for the characters in The Immortalists? Everything is so intricate and so specific, so I'm just really curious to hear how you managed to inhabit these places so well.
CB: The research was huge. And that I think is why the book — I mean, it's not that it took a ton of time compared to other people, it wasn't like a 10-year Goldfinch-type thing. But it was probably two and a half years for first draft, and then five years from conception to publication. I mean, I tend to write less about what I know than what I want to know, and there are certainly aspects of my life that are incorporated into the book. I was a ballet dancer, I am from San Francisco, I grew up with gay parents so I have some relationship to that community and a real passion for gay rights. But I'm certainly not a magician or have ever been in the military, and I'm not a scientist . . . so I just went really deep with each section, slowly, one by one, and that was the way I wrote the book. I took in everything from archival materials to nonfiction, some fiction, memoirs, documentaries, newspaper clippings, trying to visit — I think I visited everywhere that is in the book. And if I couldn't — like for instance with the Lower East Side, where things have changed so much — that research I did more using maps and old footage to try to kind of re-create for myself what that would have been like. So yeah, just a lot of really deep dives to try to do it with as much veracity as possible because I think, especially in this cultural and political climate where there's so much debate about who can write what, if you are going to make the leap to write something that is not your personal experience, you have to try to do it with as much integrity as possible — and I think research is the grounding for that.
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PS: So after doing all that research, which character do you think was ultimately easiest to write, and which was hardest?
CB: That's a good question. I think Simon was easiest, I started with him — maybe subconsciously, in part because I had those biographical similarities. I mean, even just the fact that I knew his landscape. I am from San Francisco, so I didn't have to rely as much on maps to figure out like, "OK. How would he have walked here?" Or, "Where would his apartment be?" Which I had to do for New York because, even though I visit it, I'm not very familiar with that city at all. And the ballet was all knowledge that I had. Obviously, what it was like to be a gay man during that time and then the details of the AIDS crisis was all research. But I think once I got going with his section, it really felt like it was coasting.
And then Varya's was the most difficult, by far, because of the science. And I initially had imagined her as working with this organism called the immortal jellyfish. There was a big New York Times article about it, I don't know, maybe like almost 10 years ago, about a scientist on the coast of Japan that is the only one who's able to cultivate it in the lab. And, basically, what this organism can do is when it's on the brink of death, it goes back to the first stage of life and becomes a polyp. So it's totally amazing and I was like, "This is perfect, this is so good for the book." But scientists don't know how it does what it does and so neither could Varya. I mean, probably for a couple of years I tried to make that work and I Skyped with scientists, and I was doing all of this molecular biology research and just trying to figure out what could be a narrative arc that would tie to that frame of study. I couldn't do it. But I turned in the book like that to my agent with that as the plot and she was like, "The first three-quarters of the book are great. That one is not working." So I tried more, and it was like banging my head against the wall. Then, when I was researching what kind of research is going on at UW Madison, still hoping that I could figure out somebody who was working on some jellyfish, I came across that they had the study going on in primates. When I saw it, I was like, "Oh, my God. That's it." And I realized that the kind of fleshiness and humanity of being monkeys was what that section needed instead of this more celestial kind of eerie quality that the jellyfish had.
PS: So ultimately, did you figure out all the characters first, or did you have the conceit first? How did it all come together in the format — of four different stories — that the book finally took?
CB: I think it was conceit first, in this very blurry way of knowing that I wanted there to be four siblings who went to see this fortune teller and then have the readers discover what happened to them. And then the siblings kind of came into focus one by one. Like I said, I had this really clear view of Simon from the start. And also Klara, I knew I wanted her to be a magician and kind of a nomad. And Daniel and Varya, I always knew, were the more kind of rigid, responsible two. But I didn't know — for a while, I thought maybe Daniel would be an architect at Jewish Museum. I knew that I wanted him to be more connected to Judaism. But to get back to your question, I think that as I learned more about the siblings, it influenced the trajectory — so, thinking about what they would do or where they would go, and then the snowball effect in how it would affect the other. The most wonderful moments are where you're surprised, though. Like with Eddie O'Donoghue, the cop. Initially, there were two cops that picked Simon up. He was one of them and then whatever, he was gone. And then I — I can't even remember what was the next link where I realized, but at some point it occurred to me that there didn't need to be two cops. It was just an extra character, and I didn't need to ask the reader to remember another name, so I decided, let's just have there be one. And then I became interested in him, and that interaction that he has with Klara, and I thought he might be an interesting threat, a potential malevolent presence to be watching her as she essentially picks people's pockets. And then I thought, what if he comes back in Daniel's section?
So initially, there was no sense of how he would weave in. And I really liked the surprise of that — just one of those light coincidences where like something will spark a relationship that then veers into something else. And then because of chance or maybe not, he winds up being the one who ultimately has the biggest affect on Daniel and kind of has the line to the fortune teller. So I think that's a long way of saying that the characters influenced the plot (and vice versa) as the story became clearer.
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PS: If you had to pick a specific part of the book to name as your favorite, which would it be?
CB: Well, again — going back to Daniel, I know that some people have a hard time with that section, but I really have a soft spot for him even though I think he's the most different from me and obviously the most problematic in a lot of ways. But that final confrontation with Bruna . . . usually I write sequentially in the order that it appears in the book, but sometimes, I'll have inspiration for a scene that I know is way down the line and I can write toward it. Like once I knew what Varya's big secret would be — which I didn't know until her section, actually — I wrote that scene of confrontation between them, the very long scene.
And the same thing kind of happened with the scene between Bruna and Daniel. I just really liked giving Bruna a chance to tell her own story, because one thing that I wanted the reader to notice about her is the way that she is — she's always the woman. She's kind of abhorred or judged or presumptions are made about her over and over again. But she's a human being in her own right, with pain and reasons for the way that her life has turned out. And so to have her be seen in a more vulnerable (but also more empowered) place was important to me.
I think the other reason I liked Daniel's section is because I love Ruby, and I love bringing her and Raj back all those years later. I'm a huge fan of Alice Munro. She's kind of my number one. I love the way that she will take you 50 years in the future in just one sentence. And being able to see these whole lives in the course of one compacted story. I mean Raj has a very much like "started from the bottom now he's here," and so to kind of show the leap that he makes — you know, in previous drafts I thought that I was going to lean more into him being a controlling and to some extent abusive person, and I think ultimately is possessive, but I decided not to go into that direction because I think it's more interesting to have the nuance of "yeah, he has that quality — but he's also a much better parent than Klara."
PS: If you could inhabit any of the time periods in the book, which would it be?
CB: My first instinct was to say, "I don't know, given all that was happening in those time periods, I'm fine with being in this one." But I'm also like, "Well, right now is horrible too." Yeah, 2010 was an Obama year. I think I'll go back there. I'll go back to 2010. Those were the days, it now feels like.
PS: And finally, what message would you want to give to POPSUGAR readers?
CB: Well, I think what we're seeing culturally right now is how important it is for women to feel empowered in pursuing their dreams and speaking up about injustice. And I would just encourage them to trust themselves, to go for what it is they want and deserve and to be kind to each other in the process — because it's a hard world, and I think women helping women is one of the best things that we have.
QUOTED: "It’s fair to say the premise of the book derives from my own neuroses and anxieties. The uncertainty of life itself and our lack of control over much that awaits us, have gnawed at me for years. These preoccupations came together in this novel in the form of three children who encountered a fortune-teller, and each one’s story slowly unfolds."
‘The Immortalists,’ A Conversation with Chloe Benjamin
01/09/2018 07:04 am ET
PHOTO: NATHAN JANDL
Chloe Benjamin’s first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award. She received her MFA in fiction form the University of Wisconsin. Her fiction, poetry and essays have been widely published.
The Immortalists is a tale of family love, prophesy, destiny and magic. Among other questions, it asks, If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? In 1969, a travelling psychic arrives in the Gold family’s neighborhood; she claims to be able to tell anyone the day on which he or she will die; she tells each of four Gold children when they will die. Though the siblings keep the dates secret from one another, their prophesies affect each of them profoundly. Following each sibling, the novel is a tale about life, mortality and the choices we make.
Knowing when we’re going to die is a unique premise for a novel. What made you decide to use it in ‘The Immortalists’?
I’ve always wanted to have a great fortune-teller experience in my own life.
It’s fair to say the premise of the book derives from my own neuroses and anxieties.
The uncertainty of life itself and our lack of control over much that awaits us, have gnawed at me for years. These preoccupations came together in this novel in the form of three children who encountered a fortune-teller, and each one’s story slowly unfolds.
One sibling in ‘The Immortalists,’ Klara, becomes a magician, while another, Varya, becomes a biologist focused on the quest to prolong life. Will you talk about these different approaches to cope with the uncertainties we face in life?
That’s a great question. I think much of my own quest in life is to figure out how best to cope with my own uncertainties. In the book, I wanted to look at different frameworks or philosophies to deal with the unknown—either through science or religion. Klara has faith, not so much in religion, but in magic or mystery inherent to life in the world. On the other hand, Varya’s interest in science is her attempt to find an evidenced-based, practical and realistic truth. She thinks and believes that life can be extended, and death can be outsmarted. I wanted to explore those approaches and how they each offered a different perspective and challenge to the uncertainties in life.
Both Klara and Varya must deal with mental turmoil. Will you talk about your own life in relation to these fictional characters?
The characters weren’t explicitly pulled from my life, but there are pieces of me in each of them. Although I wish I was Klara—with faith in magic—I think I’m actually closer to Varya. I don’t have her degree of anxiety or fixation on control, but there’s a good deal of me in her. So, the writing I did in her section is the most personal and raw. I don’t think I expected that to happen when I began writing the book. I myself struggle with anxiety, so through these characters, I was able to explore where that comes from and tried to see a way out of it.
So then, to some degree, for you, writing involves putting some of your own demons on the page?
Yes, it does. I wish I could say writing this book did away with some of my doubts about the unknown, but it didn’t. [Laughter]. If anything, it crystallized my uncertainties. I now understand them with more clarity, and know more about their origins. I hope the novel offers solace to people struggling with the same issues.
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One might say ‘The Immortalists’ is not so much a book about dying as it is about living life. Will you talk about that?
I thought about that as I was writing the book.
You can’t have bad things happening to characters simply for shock value; you need to provide context. Wth each of the characters, I portrayed how they lived; what they thought about their lives; and how each ultimately dealt with death.
Who are your literary influences?
My favorite writer is Alice Munro. It’s simply amazing how well she captures entire lifetimes in a single short story. I’m often shocked and delighted as I read the next sentence in one of her stories. Lorrie Moore, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, and Mary Gaitskill also influenced me profoundly. Phillip Pullman’s books are gorgeously written and explore questions of consciousness, so he’s influenced me, as has Donna Tarte.
If you could meet two fictional characters in real life, who would they be?
The characters who leap to mind are Dumbledore and Snape from the Harry Potter books. Following them and their complexities over so many books has always stayed with me.
What’s coming next from Chloe Benjamin?
I’m going on an eighteen day, sixteen city book tour for The Immortalists. I’m excited about the chance to meet readers. I’m also working on the next book, but I’m too caught up with it to say anything about it right now.
Congratulations on penning ‘The Immortalists,’ a family saga about love, destiny, living life and making choices that will cause readers to consider what to do with the time given them on this earth.
Mark Rubinstein’s latest novel is ‘Mad Dog Vengeance’ a psychological suspense thriller.
QUOTED: "The Immortalists felt like the book that I was always meant to write. ... If I died now, at least I would have written this. I don't think I'll ever have a book like this again."
Only the good die young
Alice Cary
BookPage. (Jan. 2018): p11.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
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Full Text:
It's fitting that Chloe Benjamin was born on All Soul's Day, a religious festival remembering those who have died. Her latest novel, The Immortalists, explores the eternal mysteries of death and the boundaries of science, religion and magic.
"The Immortalists felt like the book that I was always meant to write," Benjamin says during a phone call from her home in Madison, Wisconsin. "If I died now, at least I would have written this. I don't think I'll ever have a book like this again."
That's a somewhat startling statement coming from a young writer, but at just age 29, Benjamin is well on her way to being an established author. Her first novel, the award-winning The Anatomy of Dreams, explored another intangible--the surprising power of lucid dreaming.
Benjamin says of her two novels, "The Anatomy of Dreams is a more internal look at the conscious and the subconscious, and an almost claustrophobic exploration of the central relationship. With The Immortalists, I wanted to cover more ground socially, culturally and historically, as well as interpersonally. It felt important to challenge myself to write a book with greater scope and diversity."
The premise of The Immortalists is immediately gripping: In 1969, the four siblings of the Gold family (Varya, age 13; Daniel, 11; Klara, 9; Simon, 7) live in Manhattan's Lower East Side, where their father owns a tailor shop. When Daniel gets wind of a mysterious fortuneteller, the children track her down and have an encounter that will forever change their lives. The soothsayer predicts the exact date of each of their deaths.
The four sections of the book address each sibling's life in order of their predicted demise. Simon was told he would die young, while Varya seems destined to live until a ripe old age. Or is she? One of the book's central questions is whether the fortuneteller is clairvoyant, or whether her prophecies simply become self-fulfilling.
"I wanted to leave this open to interpretation, to see what the reader thinks," Benjamin says. "I've always really been drawn to books with multiple perspectives or books that show how different people can interpret the same event in such varied ways."
The book's beginning brings to mind the four siblings who step through the wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. What's more, at one point in The Immortalists, Klara's daughter cries out, "It's like Narnia!" when it begins to snow.
Benjamin laughs at the reference, explaining, "That was actually something I said when I arrived at college on the East Coast. Everyone made very prompt fun of me, because I was coming from California."
As for parallels to the C.S. Lewis classic, Benjamin says they were unintentional, although she admits, "I think those books were in the petri dish that created this one."
The Gold children all take strikingly different paths: Daniel, the oldest Gold boy, becomes a military doctor, while Varya ends up a scientist. Simon and Klara run away to San Francisco, where Simon dances, both ballet and in a gay bar. Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, following in the footsteps of her namesake grandmother. She even takes to performing her grandmother's act, the Jaws of Life, in which she hangs from a rope by her teeth, calling herself "The Immortalist."
Benjamin, who initially knew nothing about magic, modeled the Jaws of Life trick after a real act she stumbled upon during her research. A Hungarian immigrant who called herself Tiny Kline once performed this extraordinary feat over Times Square and later played a flying Tinker Bell in Disneyland. "I think she just held on with her teeth," Benjamin says. "It was so dangerous and unbelievable."
It's not surprising that showmanship is at the forefront of so much of the novel. Benjamin's mother is a stage actor, and as a child Benjamin was involved in theater and active in ballet until college.
"I miss those things a lot," she admits, "but I don't feel brave enough to perform at this point in my life. I'm more comfortable writing something where I can make it as perfect as I can and then put it out there for consumption. But that level of risk and uncertainty and vulnerability--and also a kind of flash and dazzle--was a part of my childhood."
Benjamin did substantial research for each section of the book, adding: "I don't make it easy on myself. There's an adage to write what you know; I'm more interested in writing about what I want to know."
The research for Varya's section proved most vexing. At first Benjamin had Varya study a species known as the immortal jellyfish, which seemed to be a perfect thematic fit--although the subject had its own challenges.
"I had to read so much molecular biology," Benjamin recalls, "and that is not the way my brain works. So I'd be practically crying, sitting with this stack of academic journals that I couldn't possibly understand. I worked on that section for years." Ultimately, she ended up starting it over. "It was really one of the hardest writing experiences I've had."
The completed novel spans decades, explores a variety of philosophical questions and addresses everything from gay life in 1970s San Francisco to the ethics of scientific research on animals.
As for her next novel, Benjamin is already at work. "I get an idea maybe once every five years," she says, "and it's like, OK, well I guess that's what I'm writing. So as much as it's driving me crazy, I have faith."
INTERVIEW BY ALICE CARY
THE IMMORTALISTS
By Chloe Benjamin Putnam, $26, 352 pages ISBN 9780735213180, audio, eBook available
LITERARY FICTION
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cary, Alice. "Only the good die young." BookPage, Jan. 2018, p. 11. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A520055888/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4eb24dac. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
QUOTED: "Benjamin has created mesmerizing characters and richly suspenseful predicaments in this profound and glimmering novel."
The Immortalists
Donna Seaman
Booklist.
114.8 (Dec. 15, 2017): p87.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The Immortalists.
By Chloe Benjamin.
Jan. 2018.352p. Putnam, $26 (9780735213180).
Restless during the seismic summer of 1969 on New York's Lower East Side, the four Gold siblings,
descendants of Jews who fled violent persecution overseas, sneak off to see a fortune-teller, who tells them
each, separately, the date of his or her death. So begins Benjamin's bewitching and provocative second
novel (following The Anatomy of Dreams, 2014). Each character's story is saturated with paradox in this
delving family saga laced with history and science and a heart-pounding inquiry into self, inheritance, fate,
and the mind-body connection. At 16, Simon runs away to San Francisco, comes out as gay, and discovers
his gift for dance just as AIDS begins its shattering assault. Magician Klara calls herself the Immortalist.
Daniel is a military doctor; scientist Varya is conducting a longevity study with rhesus monkeys. All are
afflicted by the poison of prophecy. Aligned in her artistic command, imagination, and deep curiosity about
the human condition with Nicole Krauss, Dara Horn, and Stacey D'Erasmo, Benjamin asks what we want
out of life. Duration? Success? Meaning? Who do we live for? Do our genes determine our path? How does
trauma alter us? Benjamin has created mesmerizing characters and richly suspenseful predicaments in this
profound and glimmering novel of death's ever-shocking inevitability and life's wondrously persistent whirl
of chance and destiny.--Donna Seaman
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Seaman, Donna. "The Immortalists." Booklist, 15 Dec. 2017, p. 87. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A521459571/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7a7e48b6.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A521459571
QUOTED: "In Benjamin's expert hands their story becomes a moving meditation on fate, faith, and the family ties that alternately hurt and heal."
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The Immortalists
Publishers Weekly.
264.43 (Oct. 23, 2017): p61.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Immortalists
Chloe Benjamin. Putnam, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-0-7352-1318-0
In her second novel, Benjamin (The Anatomy of Dreams) constructs an imaginative and satisfying family
saga. In 1969, the four rambunctious Gold children, Simon, Klara, Daniel, and Varya, visit a psychic on
Manhattan's Lower East Side who predicts the date each of them will die. The novel then follows how the
siblings deal with news of their expiration dates. In the late '70s, Klara and Simon, the youngest, run off to
San Francisco, where the closeted Simon becomes a dancer and Klara a magician and stage illusionist who
believes she can commune with the spirits of dead relatives. In 2006, Daniel, a married army doctor based
in Kingston, N.Y., learns that the psychic who foretold their fates is a con artist wanted by the FBI, and
attempts to track her down. In 2010, Varya, the eldest Gold, is a longevity researcher who feels closest to
the rhesus monkeys she uses for her experiments. But one day, a journalist named Luke interviews her and,
in the process, changes the course of her life. The author has written a cleverly structured novel steeped in
Jewish lore and the history of four decades of American life. The four Gold siblings are wonderful
creations, and in Benjamin's expert hands their story becomes a moving meditation on fate, faith, and the
family ties that alternately hurt and heal. Agent: Margaret Riley King, WME Entertainment. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Immortalists." Publishers Weekly, 23 Oct. 2017, p. 61. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A512184156/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=dc93eaed.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A512184156
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The Immortalists
Chtoe Benjamin
Library Journal.
142.11 (June 15, 2017): p11a.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
The Immortalists is a dazzling family love story reminiscent of Everything / Never Told You from a novelist
heralded by Lorrie Moore as a "great new talent" that asks the question: If you knew the date of your death,
how would you live your life? It follows the Gold children-four adolescents who seek out to hear their
fortunes.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
978-0-7352-1318-0 | $26.00/$35.00C | 100.000
Putnam | HC | January
* 978-0-7352-1319-7 | * AD: 978-0-525-49764-6
LITERARY FICTION
Social: @ChloeKBenjamin RA: For readers of The Interestings, The Nix, and The Middlesteins RI: Author
lives in Madison, Wl
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Benjamin, Chtoe. "The Immortalists." Library Journal, 15 June 2017, p. 11a. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495668210/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=284a4b30.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495668210
QUOTED: "The twist at the end is hardly shocking enough to excuse the slow buildup.Though Benjamin can turn a nice phrase, this is an uneven first novel."
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Krug Benjamin, Chloe: THE ANATOMY
OF DREAMS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 1, 2014):
COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Krug Benjamin, Chloe THE ANATOMY OF DREAMS Atria (Adult Fiction) $15.00 9, 16 ISBN: 978-1-
4767-6116-9
Dream researchers probe the subconscious, moral responsibility and the power of dreams on waking life.
Sylvie narrates the story of her entanglement with Adrian Keller, a renegade researcher interested in lucid
dreaming, and his acolyte, Gabe. Keller is the headmaster at Mills, a prep school in Northern California
(having mysteriously left his university position), and Gabe is part of a group of quick-witted teenage
students. Sylvie and Gabe become inseparable, though she tries to ignore his suspicious comings and goings
from Keller's cottage. And then, without explanation, Gabe leaves school and vanishes from Sylvie's life
until her final year at UC Berkeley. He begins stalking her, and when she confronts him, he asks the
unthinkable--that she drop out of college and work with him as a research assistant at Keller's sleep
institute. Sylvie is still in love with Gabe, so the two work with Keller on Martha's Vineyard, then at Fort
Bragg and finally in the neuroscience department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. People with
serious sleep disorders--sleepwalking and night terrors--come to learn lucid dreaming in hopes that the
lucidity will help end their dangerous behaviors. In Madison they are neighbors to a flirty Finnish couple,
academics who question the ethics of their research; they suggest that a person's knowledge of his or her
deepest self can be treacherous. Unfortunately, none of this is as compelling or mysterious as Sylvie's
narrative tries to make it sound. Further impairing the novel are the frequent chronological shifts used to
build suspense; the flipping back and forth merely muddles the plot. As Sylvie begins to question Keller's
work, she discovers the sordid truth about everything, but the twist at the end is hardly shocking enough to
excuse the slow buildup.Though Benjamin can turn a nice phrase, this is an uneven first novel.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Krug Benjamin, Chloe: THE ANATOMY OF DREAMS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2014. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A380746527/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c6dfa3f1.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A380746527
QUOTED: "The mounting tension ... will definitely keep the pages of this taut psychological exploration turning."
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The Anatomy of Dreams
Kristine Huntley
Booklist.
110.22 (Aug. 1, 2014): p12.
COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Anatomy of Dreams. By Chloe Krug Benjamin. Sept. 2014.312p. Atria, paper, $15 (9781476761169).
A reserved young woman is drawn into the study of dreams by her high-school love in Benjamin's debut
novel. Sylvie is one year away from getting her college degree when her former flame, Gabe, shows up
intent on convincing her to join him and Adrian Keller, the charismatic ex-headmaster of their boarding
school, in their quest to give people the ability to dream lucidly. Sylvie has never quite gotten over Gabe,
who left her, and their boarding school, with no explanation or good-bye. Sylvie and Gabe eventually
resume their relationship, and when they land in Madison, Wisconsin, they move in next to an enigmatic
couple, Thom and Janna, whom they befriend. Sylvie herself is haunted by particularly vivid dreams, and
soon Thom begins to play an erotic role in them. Astute readers will figure out what's going on long before
Sylvie does, but the mounting tension and atmosphere of secrecy will definitely keep the pages of this taut
psychological exploration turning right up until the tense, satisfying denouement. --Kristine Huntley
Huntley, Kristine
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Huntley, Kristine. "The Anatomy of Dreams." Booklist, 1 Aug. 2014, p. 12. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A379569234/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=af287e47.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A379569234
QUOTED: "The plot works best when the thriller elements focus on the love story."
"a sly, promising, and ambitious debut."
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The Anatomy of Dreams
Publishers Weekly.
261.14 (Apr. 7, 2014): p38.
COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Anatomy of Dreams
Chloe Krug Benjamin. Atria, $15 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-1-4767-6116-9
Benjamin's debut novel is a moving love story wrapped in the trappings of a sci-fi thriller. Gabe is a student
at a boarding school in California, where he gives Sylvie, a fellow student, her first taste of love and also
introduces her to the secret nighttime experiments of the headmaster, Dr. Keller. When it comes to falling in
love, the details are sharp--from sticky Cheetos-flavored kisses at a school dance to the heart-slamming
feeling of being ignored. The teenage relationship doesn't survive high school, but Sylvie can't shake Gabe's
memory. Then he reappears in her life and convinces her to leave UC-Berkeley before graduating and join
him in working with Dr. Keller--now a sleep researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducting
experiments that are not as benign as they seem at first. As Sylvie and Gabe's relationship begins, again, to
fray, it becomes clear that they're both harboring secrets. All this is brought into catastrophic focus by their
friendship with the attractive couple next door. Benjamin has a deft hand for rendering both the stomachtwisting
nature of early infatuation and the way relationships mellow over time. Sentences have a dreamy
rhythm. The plot works best when the thriller elements focus on the love story. A sly, promising, and
ambitious debut. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Anatomy of Dreams." Publishers Weekly, 7 Apr. 2014, p. 38. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A364577507/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d2acae53.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A364577507
A Young Novelist Grapples With
Matters of Life and Death
Inside the List
By TINA JORDAN JAN. 19, 2018
BURNING QUESTION: Would you want to know the date of your death? That’s
the premise of Chloe Benjamin’s captivating family saga “The Immortalists,” which
enters the hardcover fiction list at No. 7. It begins in the late 1960s, when all four
Gold children — at loose ends on Manhattan’s Lower East Side during a steamy,
sticky summer vacation — decide to visit a fortuneteller famous for predicting when
people will die. As Benjamin, 29, explained in an interview with NPR, “the novel
follows each of the siblings over about 50 years as they reckon with their prophecies.
Some of them fight against it. Others claim they don’t believe in it. Some use it to
push them to pursue their wildest dreams. And others are surprisingly limited by it
even if their date of death is quite far out.”
“It’s the whole idea, ‘Can you change your destiny?’” Putnam’s editorial director,
Sally Kim, says. “The novel gives you a way to think about that, to examine the idea
up close with characters you spend a lifetime with. It forces you to think about your
own life.” In the months before publication, the hallways at Putnam began to thrum
with staffers discussing the novel. “I mean, would you want to know the day you’re
going to die?” Kim asks. “The second you finish this book, you want to talk to
someone about it. When I was done reading the manuscript it was the middle of the
night, and I wanted to shake my husband awake.”
3/3/2018 A Young Novelist Grapples With Matters of Life and Death - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/books/review/chloe-benjamin-the-immortalists-best-sellers.html 2/2
CRIME TIME: The latest book vying for the “Girl on the Train” crown is “The
Wife Between Us,” a fiendishly smart cat-and-mouse thriller by Greer Hendricks and
Sarah Pekkanen that debuts at No. 2 on the hardcover fiction list. The authors met
when Hendricks, then a Simon & Schuster editor, acquired Pekkanen’s first novel
back in 2008. “When she left publishing, she told me a secret, which was that she
wanted to try to write fiction,” Pekkanen told The Washington Post. “I had just
finished a book, and she was struggling to figure out what she wanted to write. So I
suggested [a joint project] to her.”
Buzz began building for the novel last October when Steven Spielberg’s
production unit, Amblin Partners — which made “The Girl on the Train” — snapped
up the movie rights in a splashy deal. These days “The Wife Between Us” is drawing
comparisons to another hot January title, A. J. Finn’s “The Woman in the Window,”
which sits at No. 1: Both pulled in big advances, both feature unreliable narrators
and both were written by publishing insiders.
Follow New York Times Books on Facebook and Twitter (@nytimesbooks), and sign up
for our newsletter.
A version of this list appears in print on January 28, 2018, on Page BR24 of the Sunday Book Review.
QUOTED: "At her best, she succeeds in infusing her scenes with a kind of worn-in depth that keeps the reader grounded and aware of they are as Benjamin hurtles us from 1969 to the present."
The Immortalists is part sprawling family saga, part treatise on mortality
Start 2018 off right with Chloe Benjamin’s rousing read about the terrors of death.
By Constance Grady@constancegrady Jan 24, 2018, 9:00am EST
SHARE
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
On that great speaker of truths that is the TV show The Good Place, a character recently made a speech that makes as much sense of the human condition as anything else. “All humans are aware of death,” she explained. “So we’re all a little bit sad. All the time. That’s just the deal.”
The Immortalists, a new novel by Chloe Benjamin, is devoted to that awareness and its inherent sorrow, and the different ways human beings deal with it. Benjamin’s characters are more aware of their death than most people. As small children in New York’s Upper West Side in 1969, the four Gold siblings visit a fortune teller who reveals the exact date of each of their deaths — and then leaves them to live their lives with that knowledge.
Rating
Simon learns that he will die at 20, and in response, he embraces his queer identity, leaving his family behind to start a new life in San Francisco. He has no time to lose, he figures. Klara, who learns that she will die at 32, becomes obsessed with death-defying stage magic feats. Daniel, set to die at 48, aggressively embraces bourgeois domesticity: He becomes a doctor, gets married, buys a home, and courts stability at all costs.
But Vera, set to die at 88, denies herself everything. She’s a scientist who researches longevity, and she believes that the best ways to stop aging are to suppress the reproductive system or restrict one’s caloric intake — in other words, to never succumb to either hedonism or to domesticity. To cheat death, she decides, she must give up all the coping mechanisms her siblings used to cling to their lives before their deaths.
Benjamin enters each sibling’s head sequentially, giving the book a four-act structure, with each act functioning as a period piece: Here is the queer scene in San Francisco in the early ’80s; note the AIDS crisis lurking in the background (in a slightly rote and predictable fashion). Here’s what it’s like to be a touring stage magician living a life of vagabond glamour in the ’90s; note the era-appropriate details of the car phone and the smoking section at the restaurant. Here’s what it’s like to live in the suburbs in 2006. Here’s what it’s like to be a lady scientist in 2018.
At her clumsiest, Benjamin integrates these details into the novel dutifully, like a student showing off her research: I did my reading, she almost seems to say; I can give you footnotes. But at her best, she succeeds in infusing her scenes with a kind of worn-in depth that keeps the reader grounded and aware of they are as Benjamin hurtles us from 1969 to the present.
Benjamin keeps an elegant ambiguity working throughout the whole thing. It’s never entirely clear that the fortune teller who spoke to the Gold siblings told the truth: Were they always fated to die when they did? Or did the idea of their death dates lurk in their minds, drawing each into the patterns that would eventually kill them?
Whether or not their foreknowledge is accurate, the Golds are not, on balance, significantly different from the rest of us. Like the rest of us, they’re all aware of their death all the time. So they’re always a little bit sad, all the time. But it’s what they do with their sadness and their fear, The Immortalists suggests, that make them worth following.
QUOTED: "The reader will likely be thoroughly taken by the world of the Gold siblings, in all its shades of brilliant color. It's not a totally comfortable realm, since we know all too well how this tale's going to end, but getting there is lovely."
For 'The Immortalists' Knowledge Of Death Changes Lives
January 9, 20187:00 AM ET
JEAN ZIMMERMAN
The Immortalists
The Immortalists
by Chloe Benjamin
Hardcover, 346 pages purchase
On New York's Lower East Side in 1969, a fortune teller has set up shop in a tenement on Hester Street. With long brown hair that "hangs in two slender braids," and lips that are "puckered like a drawstring purse," she attracts the young Gold children, who seek an audience with the crone as a respite from their summertime blues. These four — Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya Gold — comprise the central quartet in The Immortalists, the second novel from Chloe Benjamin.
With a few notable exceptions, we know not the hour of our passing. But as the psychic ushers the young Golds one by one into her apartment lair, they each become privy to the kind of forbidden knowledge that is both a curse and a gift — the exact date when they will die. Their hyperawareness, their keen sensitivity to the tragic impermanence of life, forms the spine of the novel.
Benjamin was surely influenced by J. D. Salinger's Glass family — immortal in their own way — in creating the stable of brothers and sisters in The Immortalists. Tight as tight can be, they can nevertheless be easily annoyed by and even estranged from each other. The rich matrix of Jewish life in the neighborhood offers a demotic playground where the children are free to roam. It's a world of odd cultural mash-ups, such as warm egg custard tarts from Schmulka Bernstein's, the legendary Kosher Chinese deli on Essex Street. Leaking into this safe family haven is background noise specific to the summer of 1969: Woodstock, "Pinball Wizard," and the Stonewall riots.
Related NPR Stories
Predicting Death In 'The Immortalists'
Knowing one's own sell-by date naturally has repercussions. What do you do? Whom do you love? Life "is soon cut off," states the psalmist, "and we fly away." Disturbed by their existential destinies, the Golds become consumed by the question of how to properly live their lives. "They began together: before any of them were people, they were eggs, four out of their mother's million. Astonishing, that they could diverge so dramatically in their temperaments, their fatal flaws — like strangers caught for seconds in the same elevator."
Benjamin profiles her characters in turn. We see Simon first as a charming 16-year-old runaway, a dancer coming joyfully into an acceptance of his homosexual leanings. One of the first victims of the AIDS plague, he dies, yes, on his predicted day, before the disease that kills him has even been named. Simon is closest to his sister Klara, who teaches herself the art of magic and performs brilliantly, with a specialty of dangling at great heights, rope between her teeth. But she, too, has a date with death, and acts as if compelled to fulfill the fortune teller's prophecy.
Daniel works as a military doctor, determining which recruits are fit to face mortality on the battlefield. His passion to learn the truth about Simon and Klara puts his own life in peril. Only Varya, afflicted with serious OCD, has been promised the Biblical three-score and ten, and she learns to embrace her death-haunted siblings and right the wrongs of the family's past.
The reader will likely be thoroughly taken by the world of the Gold siblings, in all its shades of brilliant color. It's not a totally comfortable realm, since we know all too well how this tale's going to end, but getting there is lovely.
On offer in The Immortalists is the kind of in-depth research, period and otherwise, which can occasionally turn to sludge. Marmosets, prestidigitation, motor homes all endure thoroughgoing treatment at the hands of the diligent author. When Benjamin catalogs San Francisco's Castro district in the 1980s, the reader can bet the names of the gin joints of the day are spot on.
But the writing mostly flows easily. Klara "admires the look of the desert, the blue mountains and sorbet sky, but she doesn't like the feel of it, both languid and restless, or the heat that presses down on her like hands."
"We are not given a short life but we make it short," writes the Stoic philosopher Seneca. "Life is long if you know how to use it." The reader will likely be thoroughly taken by the world of the Gold siblings, in all its shades of brilliant color. It's not a totally comfortable realm, since we know all too well how this tale's going to end, but getting there is lovely.
Jean Zimmerman's latest novel, Savage Girl, is out now in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin.
QUOTED: "Benjamin’s ... premise situates her novel in magical territory, but the spell doesn't quite work."
THE IMMORTALISTS
by Chloe Benjamin
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A psychic on the Lower East Side tells four children the dates they will die. Only time will tell if her predictions are accurate.
“Perhaps nothing would have happened were it not the pit of summer, with a month and a half of humid boredom behind them and a month and a half ahead….[T]his year—the summer of 1969—it seems something is happening to everyone but them.” Varya is 13, Daniel, 11, Klara, 9, and Simon, 7, the day they visit the woman on Hester Street who is said to know the future. She sees each of the siblings alone, telling each the exact date of his or her death; at first, the reader hears only Varya’s, which is far in the future. The next four sections focus on each of the siblings in turn, continuing through 2010. Simon runs off to San Francisco and becomes a dancer at a gay club called Purp; when one of his many sex partners is described as an Australian flight attendant, we, too, can predict his future. Klara, who tags along with Simon to the West Coast, studies magic and eventually takes her act to Las Vegas; she marries her stage partner and has a child. Daniel becomes a doctor in the military; Varya, a scientist doing longevity experiments with primates. Speaking of longevity experiments with primates, the book’s hypothesis about the fortuneteller’s death dates is inexplicably credulous, though suggestions of a self-fulfilling prophecy muddy the waters a bit. In any case, the siblings are an unhappy bunch, saddled not only with this unwelcome knowledge of the future but with alcoholism, depression, OCD, possible bipolar disease, and many regrets; misunderstandings and grudges divide them from each other. Various minor characters—a cop; spouses, lovers, and offspring; the fortuneteller herself—weave through the plot in a contrived way.
Benjamin’s (The Anatomy of Dreams, 2014) premise situates her novel in magical territory, but the spell doesn't quite work.
Pub Date: Jan. 9th, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1318-0
Page count: 352pp
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 17th, 2017
QUOTED: "In the siblings’ tales, author Benjamin shines a subtle light on the bonds of kinship and familial love, counter-balanced by the freedom, or willingness, to choose one’s own path. The Immortalists is a rich and rewarding novel, sure to rank among the very best of 2018’s crop, and one to be re-read and savored for years to come."
The Immortalists: A Novel
By Chloe Benjamin G.P. Putnam's Sons 352 pp.
Reviewed by Bob Duffy
January 16, 2018
Does knowing the date of your death make a difference in how you live?
Chloe Benjamin’s second novel unwinds from a meme that could animate a gory horror flick or a midnight college gab session: What if you knew in advance the exact day you would die?
This narrative nugget could break in any number of directions. Benjamin treats it with profound, heart-tugging respect, and gives us a novel crafted with a resonant sensitivity to the lifelong complexities of family relationships.
At the heart of this marvelous novel are four interlocking life histories that unfurl from a single childhood event shared by the central characters. One summer day in 1969, the four siblings of the Gold family, offspring of second-generation Jewish immigrants, set out to consult a psychic living not far from their Lower East Side apartment. The kids are Varya (13), Daniel (11), Klara (9), and Simon (7). Daniel organizes the children’s visit to the supposed oracle, having overheard two other boys talking about the woman’s ability to tell her visitants the day and year when their deaths will come.
The old woman sees each of the kids privately, and each reacts differently to what she tells them. Varya, informed she will live to age 88, dismisses the prediction as trivial, and is the only one to share what she’s learned. The others keep their predicted end-dates to themselves, at least at this moment in the novel. Even so, as their individual stories unfold, each of them ⸺ whether he or she admits to belief in the prophecy or not ⸺ appears to make life choices that take the psychic’s prediction into account.
After her opening-frame section recounting the children’s visit, Benjamin organizes her narrative in four successive segments, each of which tells the unfolding story of a Gold sibling from his or her point-of-view.
Structurally and thematically, The Immortalists brings to mind Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Bridge of San Luis Rey. The Wilder novel opens with five travelers crossing a rope bridge that gives way and plunges them to their deaths. The book then backtracks to tell each of their stories, focusing on the unpredictable intersections of fate, circumstance, and coincidence.
Benjamin skillfully embraces the same themes, but takes something of a reverse angle on Wilder’s premise: She faithfully follows the siblings’ lives after their pivotal moment and, like Schrodinger and his famous cat, shrouds the actual outcome for each youngster in artful uncertainty. Still, like The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Immortalists is about living under the ultimate specter of death, a premise also shared, and richly so, by Kate Atkinson’s wonderful Life After Life.
Back to the story…or at least as much of it as can be shared without giving too much away.
The two youngest Golds, Simon and Klara, seven years after their fateful audience with the oracle, run away to San Francisco on a bold pilgrimage to shape their futures. Sixteen-year-old Klara dreams of succeeding as a stage magician. Simon, 14, acknowledging his homosexuality, is determined to live true to his nature, which he cannot do at home in New York.
For both teens, this hurried escape into an imagined future may or may not be inspired by the psychic’s prophecies. Just as likely ⸺ and more credibly ⸺ it springs from the streak of stubborn individualism in each of them.
For their part, Varya and Daniel, estranged from their younger siblings, choose more conventional life paths. Varya becomes an experimental biologist; Daniel an Army doctor. A wealth of other characters people the story: among them, Saul and Bertie, the children’s parents; Simon’s lover, Robert; Klara’s stage partner/husband and, ultimately, her daughter, Ruby; Daniel’s wife, Mira; and the Romani fortune-teller herself.
And there’s a persistent San Francisco cop-turned-FBI-agent who wanders in and out of the narrative, the dogged agent of fate or coincidence (take your pick). He directly touches the lives of three of the siblings, with a lasting impact on Daniel’s fate.
In the siblings’ tales, author Benjamin shines a subtle light on the bonds of kinship and familial love, counter-balanced by the freedom, or willingness, to choose one’s own path. The Immortalists is a rich and rewarding novel, sure to rank among the very best of 2018’s crop, and one to be re-read and savored for years to come.
Bob Duffy is a Maryland author and a working consultant in branding and advertising.
QUOTED: "Her writing, certainly, is anything but lurid—brought to such a journalistic polish that some passages, especially those giving background on sleep research, have the cool clarity of a highbrow magazine article. Surely we can’t complain too loudly if a writer avoids the cheap pleasures of suspense in favor of a literary interest in memory and regret. (And the final chapters here, for you Paris Review readers, are satisfyingly wistful). Yet I sometimes longed for this novel about the study of dreams to have more of the chills and suspense"
The Anatomy of Dreams
Chloe Krug Benjamin Atria 309 pp.
Reviewed by Nick Wolven
August 21, 2014
A tale of controlling and mastering sleep disorders and dreams set against a backdrop of growing up in the modern world.
Chloe Krug Benjamin’s debut novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, begins at an East Coast boarding school, where Sylvie Patterson, a studious junior, is dating her oddball classmate Gabe. From the start, Gabe annoys Sylvie with typically boyish behavior, doting on her and then mysteriously withdrawing, sneaking into and out of her room in the middle of the night, and, what especially bugs Sylvie, evincing a bizarre fascination with their headmaster, an imposing psychologist named Mr. Keller.
Soon, Gabe disappears, dropping out of school and Sylvie’s life, leaving her with confused feelings and perplexing questions — and leaving the reader in this state also, because it’s unclear at this point how much of Sylvie’s uneasiness owes to ordinary teenage troubles and how much to a deeper and potentially sinister mystery.
That uncertainty lingers through much of Benjamin’s book, which has all the trappings of a scary thriller, but which skillfully converts itself into something more genteel and, in a way, more methodical: a study of the grim work of growing up.
The narrative skips in time, proceeding through hints and delayed revelations. We learn that the eccentric Mr. Keller is a psychologist involved in edgy research; that Gabe is his apprentice; and that the two men have hatched a plan to recruit Sylvie for their not-quite-kosher experiments — investigations into the sort of sleep disorders that have given comedian Mike Birbiglia so much grief and good material: RBD, parasomnias, so-called “sexsomnia,” and the kinds of outlandish somnambulism that lead sleeping people to wrestle with invisible predators and throw themselves out of windows.
Keller, a disciple of Jungian psychoanalysis, hopes that by teaching his patients the practice of lucid dreaming (the ability to control their dreams), he can cure their disorders by helping them summon up, confront, and defeat the devils that harass their unconscious minds.
Well, we all know where that leads. Ever since Dr. Jekyll turned himself into Mr. Hyde, or anyway, since the psychoanalysts put Greek names to Victorian anxieties, it’s been a rough scene for fictional characters who take a trip into the dark territory of the unconscious.
Sylvie soon befriends a neighbor, Thom, a sexy student of romantic poetry, who warns her that she and her fellow researchers are messing around, in classic mad-scientist fashion, with forces they can’t begin to understand — “dragging [the subconscious] out of its cave,” as Thom puts it, “and shining a flashlight in its eyes.”
The old monsters of myth, purged by rationalism from the external world, have taken refuge in the plumbless caves of the mind, and the result is that self-examination, taken too far, can become tantalizingly treacherous. Start poking around in the subterranean reaches of the self, and you might, like the dwarves of Moria, dig too deep, unleashing horrors on the conscious mind.
Or not.
Benjamin’s story, despite its gothic potential, carefully pivots away from the pulpy allure of its premise. The fears of the Victorians linger more in our literature than in our lives, and while a story about sketchy dream researchers might seem at first glance to throb with dark urges that we dare not name, the truth is that people nowadays don’t worry overmuch about repressed appetites.
What vexes us isn’t the stifling of our desires, but a superabundance of ways to fulfill them: too many life choices, too many potential lovers, too many violent video games. In one of many intriguing divagations, Benjamin offers the theory that our dreams trouble us not because they’re populated by spooky and elusive symbols (the old Freudian view), but because they’re like giant computer simulations in which we play out potential lives we never got a chance to live —unconscious repositories of roads untaken, risks never ventured, opportunities that won’t come again.
It’s a smart conceit. In these days of Wednesday-night therapy, life hacking, and obsessive self-analysis, we’re haunted not by who we secretly are, but by whom we might have been.
All of which goes to say that what we have here is something like an old-fashioned horror story given a contemporary literary treatment. Make no mistake: As Sylvie pursues her work with Gabe and Keller, she gets tangled in some cracking plot twists. There are sexy midnight trysts, cruel conspiracies, a love triangle, even a multiple murder — and, yes, scenes that blur the border between fantasy and reality.
But through these shocks, Sylvie is troubled mostly by practical questions. Did she pick the right career? Is she with the right guy? Should she drop out of college? What the heck is she doing with her life?
For my part, I wished that Benjamin’s novel had been a little less levelheaded, a little more shameless about exploiting its deliciously eerie premise. Her writing, certainly, is anything but lurid — brought to such a journalistic polish that some passages, especially those giving background on sleep research, have the cool clarity of a highbrow magazine article.
Surely we can’t complain too loudly if a writer avoids the cheap pleasures of suspense in favor of a literary interest in memory and regret. (And the final chapters here, for you Paris Review readers, are satisfyingly wistful). Yet I sometimes longed for this novel about the study of dreams to have more of the chills and suspense, the murky foreboding of dreams themselves.
Nick Wolven’s stories have appeared most recently in the New England Review, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Panhandler.
QUOTED: "The Anatomy of Dreams is an ambitious novel that puts Benjamin on display as a writer with talent—and shows that she has plenty more in the tank. The novel itself is an easy read, yet not always simple to digest. A book like that is, in ways, a dream."
Chloe Benjamin's 'The Anatomy of Dreams': September Editor's Pick
ByMEREDITH TURITSSept 17 2014
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On a night during which you have a nightmare, you're rocked. On occasion, you wake up sweating or with a pounding heart; you experience a visceral feeling, and the whole experience is terrible. But ultimately, you're safe and sound in your bed — nothing's actually changed, and you're no worse for wear.
But imagine that's not the case. Imagine you're a sleepwalker, and those dreams you've been having turn violent — you get out of bed, you fall and scrape your knees and palms, you wander in the streets, you talk to or even threaten people, or may actually cause them physical harm. You're almost creating another life for yourself while you dream.
These are the people 24-year-old Sylvie Patterson and her boyfriend Gabe research in a controversial sleep study, headed up by Dr. Adrian Keller, the former headmaster of their Northern California boarding high school. Keller believes that lucid dreaming can be therapeutic for these patients, and wraps both Gabe and Sylvie into his research in Madison, Wisconsin. But what Sylvie discovers as they hit bumps in their study and their personal lives — secrets from Keller's past, details that her boyfriend is keeping quiet from her, and even tricks her own mind is playing on her — makes for scientific research (and a book plot) that is anything but straightforward, and is instead full of questions, twists, and turns.
In her debut novel The Anatomy of Dreams (Atria), Chloe Benjamin tells Sylvie's story primarily through vignettes both back at Mills, the boarding school where she and Gabe initially meet as an odd match, and in Wisconsin, where the couple is assisting Keller with the sleep research. Bouncing between time and space, she opens up questions through Sylvie's eyes about Gabe, Keller, and her own place in the world with the delicacy of a literary novel, but also the grit of a thriller.
Hanging over the entire narrative is the eerie, floating sensibility of a dreamlike state. The reader knows there are unanswered puzzles and pieces to put together — especially we're introduced to Sylvie and Gabe's next door neighbors, and find out more about Keller's history with research. Yet, despite the mystery, an urgency never settles over the pages. This is due to Benjamin's language, which is sharp, precise, and polished. Her words are the grounding force in the novel, and shape Sylvie to be a practical, hyper-focused character in a world of surreal musings. Where, exactly, is she going? And what is she doing in this world of dreams?
As a result, what Sylvie does isn't surprising — but what happens to her in the end is mostly fulfilling. That's especially the case when Benjamin ties up the threads on the book's beating heart, the love story plot line — an arc she constructs deftly and realistically over the course of the novel — and also gives Sylvie a place in the world she's so desperately searching for.
The Anatomy of Dreams is an ambitious novel that puts Benjamin on display as a writer with talent — and shows that she has plenty more in the tank. The novel itself is an easy read, yet not always simple to digest. A book like that is, in ways, a dream.
Image: Nicholas Wilkes