On Avoiding Certain Novels, Until I Don't: "The Immortalists," by Chloe Benjamin

Regular readers of this blog may remember that I occasionally start a post with something like “I didn’t want to read this book because…” or “I resisted reading this book because…” but then say that because of a recommendation, or because a book fell across my path, or some other reason, I ended by reading the book and being very glad I did. As this has happened many times over the years, I am wondering what I can learn from that pattern. Should I chide myself for being too “fussy” about what I read, or too narrow, or too dismissive of certain genres or types of books or of certain topics? Or should I congratulate myself for, in at least some cases, having overcome my initial resistance, somehow knowing on some level that the decision to read the book after all would be a good one? I am still not sure of the answer to these questions. But I do have yet another example to share with you. I read several glowing reviews of Chloe Benjamin’s novel “The Immortalists” (Putnam’s, 2018), and couldn’t get past the woo-woo element of four young siblings’ (just children at the time) being told by a sort of fortune teller the dates of their deaths. The whole thing sounded creepy and left me deeply uncomfortable. But for whatever reason, I decided to read the novel after all, and it is a fascinating one. I won’t tell you whether the fortune teller’s predictions come true, but they do force each of the siblings to face and struggle with the possibility that they might, and each of them is affected by the predictions in different ways. The novel is about more than this, though; it is above all, in my opinion, about families and their lasting deep connections, even when family members don’t see each other for a long time, and even after the death(s) of some family member(s). There are also the larger questions of what is important in life, and how one should live one’s life. Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon live their lives vividly and very differently from each other. Their mother Gertie looms large in the story as well, along with the memory of their father Saul, who dies early on in the novel. An added point of interest for me: The siblings grow up in New York, but two of them move to San Francisco. The author’s San Francisco childhood is evident in her detailed knowledge of the city, which this San Franciscan appreciated. But back to the beginning of this post: perhaps I am encouraging myself and others to push a little past our initial resistance to and dismissal of certain novels and other books, reminding ourselves that there might be a reason for all those good reviews and enthusiastic recommendations, and maybe at least giving those books a chance.