When was the last time you stopped in the middle of reading a book because it was too good? When you reached a saturation point because all you did was think about the story and the characters and you knew you needed a break?
That happened to me halfway through "The Immortalists." I had read blurbs about this novel and from the first it seemed too quirky or pretentious for me. But my friend Jani told me to read it and she does not recommend books lightly. Oddly, it came to me within a week of putting it on my library request list and once I started reading, well, it was difficult to stop. But I made myself take a three day break for many reasons. One, I didn't want to finish it because I loved it too much. Two, I didn't want to finish it because I loved the characters too much and I worried about them. Three, I didn't want to read more about life, death, love, the connection of those three, the mere idea that perhaps we mortals could be complicit about when we die and the terrifying concept of that simple statement.
The story is simple, we follow four siblings from about the ages of ten until whenever, all completely different (as siblings often are) but all four of them connected by one creepy moment when they are barely into their teenage years. A fortune teller they go see on a lark tells them when they are going to die. (This is not a spoiler, it tells you this in the first sentence of the inside flap of the book.) For me, it wasn't this "life sentence" that made the story real, it was what each kid thought of that deadline that got under my skin, that made me wonder "... what if...?"
There are so many insights in this book about life, siblings, death, fate, God, love and hate and the unknown. I have copied paragraphs and paragraphs to read again and if I ever see this book on a sale table I will buy it because I already want to re-read it.
About parenting: "She understands the loneliness of parenting, which is the loneliness of memory - to know that she connects a future unknowable to her parents with a past unknowable to her child."
And about living alone: "The cost of loneliness is high but the cost of loss is higher."
About God: "Daniel's belief went willingly, logically, the way the boogeyman disappeared once you looked under the bed. That was the problem God: he didn't hold up to a critical analysis. He wouldn't stand for it. He disappeared.
.... In inventing God we've developed the ability to consider our own straits - and we've equipped Him with the kind of handy loopholes that enable us to to believe we only have so much control The truth is that most people enjoy a certain level of impotence. But I think we do have control, so much that it scares us to death. As a species, God might be the greatest gift we've ever given ourselves. The gift of sanity."
I guess what I am trying to convey is that this novel was so thought provoking for me that I want everyone to read it and have those same thoughts enlivened for them. That won't happen, of course, literature is so personal that one person's Shakespeare is another's Doonesbury. But there is insight to be gained in each of those. This book by Chloe Benjamin has stayed with me for days. It has made me think about life and death and redemption and the meaning of all of it.
Put it on your library list and when it appears on the sale table, buy it.
And I thank Jani for her strong recommendation.
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