It’s the prophecy, something he would very much like to forget but has instead dragged behind him all these years. He hates the woman for giving it to him, and he hates himself for believing her. If the prophecy is a ball, his belief is its chain; it is the voice in his head that says Hurry, says Faster, says Run. [p. 77]
In the summer of '69, the four Gold siblings -- Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya -- visit a fortune teller, who tells each of them, with perfect accuracy, the date on which they will die.
This knowledge changes them all in different ways. Klara and Simon leave home and head for San Francisco: Daniel is determined to discredit the fortune teller: Varya devotes her life to anti-ageing research. Are they fighting their destinies, or fulfilling them? Would things be different if they had remained as close as they were in 1969? They don't all know one another's predicted expiry dates: do they trust -- and / or believe -- the predictions, or not?
The Immortalists begins in 1969, and ends in 2010. It's divided into four sections, one for each of the siblings in order of death. Simon becomes a dancer; Klara performs as a magician (with some experiences that might be literal magic) under the stage name 'the Immortalist'; Daniel is caught up in the FBI investigation of a Romany fraud ring; and Varya is involved in a decades-long study of ageing in primates. All four grasp at humanity, at love and life, despite their foreknowledge.
I finished this book feeling that I hadn't liked it much, and that I rejected the premise that a life full of human interactions (and families, and children) is better than a long, solitary existence: but I'm still thinking about it, and about the Golds, and their parents and lovers and friends, and the occasional, inexplicable weirdnesses of their lives, nearly a month after reading.
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