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sarakomo 's review for:
The Immortalists
by Chloe Benjamin
2021: very big [b:Ask Again, Yes|42201996|Ask Again, Yes|Mary Beth Keane|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557052821l/42201996._SY75_.jpg|60897878] vibes from this book (is there a cop named Eddie O'Donoghue in it? Why yes, yes there is).
The premise here is that four siblings go and visit a psychic when they are young, she tells them when each of them is going to die, and then each of the siblings narrate separate sections until (you guessed it) they die. For a book that's meant to be about familial ties, I think Benjamin did the narrative a disservice by separating each of the characters into sections. She silos each of her main characters to deal with their own problems and it ultimately loses any of its "family is important" narrative.
It's a very Jewish book overall. This is not a criticism for sure, just something I didn’t know going into it. Not only are the main characters all raised in the Jewish faith, but a lot of the metaphors have Jewish references: "there were times he thought of his siblings and felt love sing from him like a shofar".
Lots of little things bothered me about this book - there are a lot of very sexual references that feel out of place with the rest of the story. The second line of the book is about the fur between the legs of a thirteen year old, and goes on to describe her nipples. This continues throughout - random sexual descriptions of the characters, without the characters being involved in any sexual activity at the time.
Mostly, the deaths are very incongruous to how the characters are set up (imho). I won't drop all the spoilers here, but Daniel is a fucking doctor, there's no way he would die like that. Also, Klara's death really came out of nowhere; I thought it was very poorly set up. Even the smaller characters die in these extraordinary ways without any preamble (Asher?!) Overall, there's just a ton of death in this book, without the emotional weight to back it up.
The premise here is that four siblings go and visit a psychic when they are young, she tells them when each of them is going to die, and then each of the siblings narrate separate sections until (you guessed it) they die. For a book that's meant to be about familial ties, I think Benjamin did the narrative a disservice by separating each of the characters into sections. She silos each of her main characters to deal with their own problems and it ultimately loses any of its "family is important" narrative.
It's a very Jewish book overall. This is not a criticism for sure, just something I didn’t know going into it. Not only are the main characters all raised in the Jewish faith, but a lot of the metaphors have Jewish references: "there were times he thought of his siblings and felt love sing from him like a shofar".
Lots of little things bothered me about this book - there are a lot of very sexual references that feel out of place with the rest of the story. The second line of the book is about the fur between the legs of a thirteen year old, and goes on to describe her nipples. This continues throughout - random sexual descriptions of the characters, without the characters being involved in any sexual activity at the time.
Mostly, the deaths are very incongruous to how the characters are set up (imho). I won't drop all the spoilers here, but Daniel is a fucking doctor, there's no way he would die like that. Also, Klara's death really came out of nowhere; I thought it was very poorly set up. Even the smaller characters die in these extraordinary ways without any preamble (Asher?!) Overall, there's just a ton of death in this book, without the emotional weight to back it up.