How would you live your life if you knew the day you were going to die?
That's the question Chloe Benjamin's characters face in the heart-wrenching novel The Immortalists, the second novel from the San Francisco-based author. The story follows the Gold siblings who, as children, take a trek through Manhattan to visit a psychic who convinces them she knows the day that they will die.
During this week's episode of MashReads, we discussed Benjamin's engrossing book and whether or not knowing your personal expiration date impacts the life you ultimately live.
SEE ALSO:MashReads Podcast: Can Joe Hill's horror books stand out from his father's works?In The Immortalists, we are transported to New York City's Lower East Side in 1969. The Golds — Varya, Daniel, Klara, and Simon — each find themselves curious about a mysterious nomadic psychic they've discovered through word of mouth. At the insistence of the eldest brother, Daniel, they meet this woman, who individually tells them their fate. We then follow each character as they live their life with the prophecies, accurate or not, hanging over their heads.
Simon builds a life for himself in San Francisco as a dancer while the AIDS epidemic swirls around him, while Klara attempts to become a magician. Daniel finds solace as a doctor in the army, and Varya dedicates her life to research as a scientist. Despite their wildly different lives, they each grapple with grief and whether or not they will take stock in what was told to them as children.
(Edited lightly for length and clarity)
Did you grow up with many siblings? A lot of this has to do with familial relations ... can you tell me a bit about what made you want to write about four kids?
I grew up in kind of a modern family, in San Francisco, with two sets of parents — one gay and one straight — and two brothers. One of my brothers is my mom and her partner Molly's child, and my other brother is the child of my mom and my dad. I think I've always been fascinated by family and by the different forms it can take, and also the way that people who start in the same petri dish can turn out so very different.
"I think I've always been fascinated by family and by the different forms it can take, and also the way that people who start in the same petri dish can turn out so very different."
How much did your own family experience inform both the individual characters and the structure of this book?
My life seeps into the book in ways I don't always think about until later. While writing it, everything feels very fictional, but when looking back, certain things come from people I know. But these four siblings felt very like themselves to me. My life inspired certain things — like my love of San Francisco. I think that's why Simon's section is first. Subconsciously, I was able to start with that one because I knew the place and I was a dancer for many years. There was a lot I didn't know about — certainly the experience about being a gay man, especially at that time. But I think I share some DNA with that section that people might not expect.
You start off with a fantastical premise, but then you explore these somber grounded themes of family, grief, and the curse/mystery of not knowing. How did you merge those components?
I think for me it was more about exploring those deeper questions and this idea that you knew the date of your death ... about uncertainty and how we cope with that.
In terms of jobs and craft, what was it like diving into this magic world?
I loved the magic research. I think that's another reason I have a soft spot for Klara. One of the things I thought was really interesting about it is gender. Klara is a female magician, and magic has always been and remains very white and male. Women are props, they're usually, frankly, being cut in half, put in a box, or surrounded by fire — and Klara doesn't want to be the assistant, she wants to be the star, and she actually has a male assistant, ultimately. There's a book I read, Hiding the Elephantby Jim Steinmeyer. If anybody is interested in magic, he's written this incredible exploration of a couple hundred years in magical history, but he also looks at the rivalries and the relationships between magicians over time. That interpersonal angle was really interesting to me.
And as always, we close the show with recommendations:
Chloe gives a shoutout to The Handmaids Tale(the book andthe adaptation), James Baldwin's Collected Essays (which she thinks everyone should read), and Jaimie Quatro's Fire Sermon.
Peter recommends the Netflix show The End of the F***ing Worldwhich follows a British teen who is a self-identified sociopath who runs away with a fellow teen and struggles with his personal vow to ultimately kill her. "It's this slightly nihilistic, slightly heartfelt look at two troubled people circling each other's troubles in a whirlpool of teenage angst," Peter explains.
Martha continues her streak of unconventional recommendations — this time, keeping physical albums full of photographs. "This is kind of in the vein of [The Immortalists], and how Ruby connects to her mother through old photographs that Daniel has."
MJ thinks you should read "I Used to Insist I Didn't Get Angry. Not Anymore," an essay on female rage by Leslie Jamison (author of The Empathy Exams) published earlier this year in the New York Times. "I feel like that's the lesson of 2017, 2018. It is okay to be angry. It's so incredibly thoughtful in the way Leslie Jamison always is," MJ says. He also throws in another recommendation: poems by Sam Sax, specifically "Written to be yelled at Trump tower during a vigil for the NEA." You can watch Sax perform that here.
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