The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Published by Putnam ISBN 9780735213180
Hardcover, $26, 352 pages

At last year's Book Expo Editors' Book Buzz, six books were presented as books to look forward to in 2017/2018. Ayobami Adabeyo's Stay With Me was one presented and it was the most compelling book I read in 2017. (The complete list is here.)

 A.J. Finn's The Woman in the Window was also on that list and it shot to the top of the bestseller list when it published last week. (My review is here.)

A third book at that presentation was Chloe Benjamin's novel The Immortalists. It asks the question "if you knew the exact date of your death, how would you live your life?" Four young siblings find out that a psychic lives near them, and for a price she will tell you the date of your death.

The year is 1969, and the country is in turmoil as Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon pay her a visit and one by one learn of their fateful date. The three oldest share their dates with each other, but the youngest, Simon, keeps his information to himself.

Years later Daniel is at college studying to be a doctor, and Varya is also away at school with dreams of a medical career when a family tragedy brings them home. Klara has always been the flighty one, and Simon has been the dependable one, the one who is being groomed to take over the family tailoring business.

Each sibling gets to narrate their own story. Simon chafes at his destiny of being trapped in the family business. When Klara decides to go west to San Francisco to become a magician, she convinces Simon to come with her, and that is where his story begins.

Simon finds his true self among the San Francisco scene and it was his story that moved me the most. His search for his authentic identity and for love is so emotional, it draws the reader in.

Klara's dreams take longer to come true. She works dead-end jobs while she perfects her magician craft. Her story and Simon's intersect for many years, until Klara's struggle to make it as a magician and her own love life take her on the road.

Klara's story has a bit of a mystical touch to it, and I found the denouement of her story the most troubling.

Daniel gets to be a doctor. He works for the government as an army doctor, certifying young men as healthy for military duty. Could his career choice be a result of the psychic's words, an attempt to influence someone's else's fate?

Varya stayed at home to care for their mother, giving up her dreams of being a doctor. She is resentful that Simon escaped while she carried the burden for all of her siblings.

She eventually ends up working in medical research, working with research animals to discover why some people live longer than others.

All of the Gold children's lives as adults seemed to be influenced by what the psychic told them. Their mother said something that is prescient of the future:

"Nobody picks their life, I sure didn't." Gertie laughs, a scrape. "Here's what happens: you make choices and then they make choices. Your choices make choices."

The Gold children made choices, some based on their experience with the psychic. Did her predictions make choices for them?

After reading the engrossing, brilliant The Immortalists, you can't help but ask the question of yourself- if you knew the date you were going to die, how would you live your life? You'll be pondering that long after the book ends, and isn't that the sign of the good book- one that makes you think?

So far, the Editors' Book Buzz has been three for three; can they extend the streak? My post about the Book Expo Editors' Book Buzz can be found here.

Speed Dating at the Book Expo

One of the most enjoyable events every year at the Book Expo is Book Group Speed Dating, organized by Carol Fitzgerald and her group at the Book Reporter Network. Nearly two dozen publishers present their upcoming fall books to the 200 librarians, booksellers and book club organizers. The publishers go from table to table and they each get a few minutes to make their pitch.

It's great because you get to hear about books that aren't necessarily on your radar, books from smaller publishing houses, as well as the more well-known publishers. These are some of the books that caught my eye.

Harlequin, known for their romance novels, is branching out with their Graydon House imprint. Kaira Rouda's Best Day Ever is described as a "wild ride of psychological suspense." A husband arranges for a special day for his wife on their anniversary, but his idea of a "special day" differs from hers. Click here for more information.

Sourcebooks presented Chelsea Sedoti's novel, As You Wish, is a young adult novel that will also appeal to adults. In the small town of Madison in the Mojave Desert, people on their 18th birthday get one wish. Some people wish for money, some wish for love, and Eldon has 25 days until his birthday to figure out what he should wish for. I don't normally like magical realism, but this one intrigues me. Click here for more info. 

St. Martin's Press had two books that interested me. Daren Wang's The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is a fictionalized version of a true story about an western New York town, near Buffalo, that seceeded from the Union during the Civil War. I grew up in central New York and have never heard of this story, and the fact that there is a female protagonist seals the deal for me. This book is available now, click here for info.

Janet Peery, a former National Book Award finalist for her first novel The River Beyond The World in 1996, is back with her second novel The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs, about a dysfunctional family with five adult children who all have issues. The mother is desparately trying to save her youngest son from his addiction, and the story sounds heartbreaking and deeply moving. This one is also available now here.

And this concludes my wrap-up of Book Expo 2017. It was a whirlwind two-and-half days filled with books and catching up with friends, and there is not much better than that.

 You can find all of the books presented here.

Book Expo- Authors Pose With Their Books

One fun thing I like to do at the Book Expo is ask authors to pose with their books. It's nice to put a face with the author's name, and most of them are very happy to oblige.

Caitlin Macy has written Mrs. called a "modern-day House of Mirth" set in my 'hood of the Upper East Side, and featuring a character  who is an "obsessive prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office". Shades of BIllions, perhaps?

The cover of Melanie Benjamin's The Girls in the Picture caught my eye. It's a novel based on the the friendship between Mary Pickford and Frances Marion. Fans of Adriana Trigiani's All The Stars in the Heavens, as well as Melanie's previous novels The Aviator's Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue, will definitely want this one.  

Hallie Ephron's 2013 suspense novel, There Was An Old Woman, was terrific and had a great character, an 80-year-old woman named Mina who was out to solve a murder in her neighborhood. I can't wait to read her new book, You'll Never Know, a mystery that involves sisters, a disappearance and a creepy doll.

This smiling guy is Matthew Weiner, the genius behind TV's Mad Men. His novel is Heather, the Totality, is described as a "chilling novel about a collision course between a privileged family and a dangerous young man." He told us it's a little dark. Hmmmm.

I loved, loved, loved Tayari Jones' novel, Silver Sparrow, and was thrilled to get to tell her so, and get a signed copy of her upcoming An American Marriage, about a young couple whose marriage is tested when the husband is unjustly jailed.

Ben Blum's memoir tells his true story of his goal to be an Army ranger. On his final leave before deployment to Iraq, while his family is waiting to see him home in Colorado, he is in Tacoma, committing armed robbery of a bank with two other soldiers and two other men. Why did he do this? Ranger Games has the answer.

Emily Culliton's The Misfortune of Marion Palm is a debut novel about a Brooklyn Heights wife and mother who has embezzled money from her children's private school and goes on the run. This caper is fiction (I hope).

Alice Hoffman is a prolific writer, and many of her books have a magical touch in them. The Rules of Magic even has it right in the title. This one is a prequel to her famous bestseller Practical Magic.

I was first in line to get Eleanor Henderson's autograph on her new novel, Twelve-Mile Straight, inspired by stories of her family. Her debut novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is one of my all-time favorites, and I'm almost done with this one and it is just as stunning. (Henderson lives in Ithaca.)

Kate Moore's book, The Radium Girls, tells the true story of women who were poisoned by their employer  and fought back years later to get justice. This one is for fans of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Silkwood.

Nancy Pearl is the most famous librarian in the United States. (She even has an action figure!) Her novel George and Lizzie is the story of a marriage where the two parties have differing ideas of love and marriage.

I'm intrigued by Sujata Massey's mystery, The Widows of Malabar Hill,  the first in a new series about a young female lawyer in 1920's Bombay, fighting for justice for a group of widows. 

The Queen of Mysteries is Mary Higgings Clark, and I alway stop by to say hello and get a copy of her latest. This one is All By Myself, Alone.

There are always famous people to spot at the Book Expo, like a smiling Savannah Guthrie from the Today Show, signing copies of her children's book, Princesses Wear Pants.

Savannah's Today Show compatriot Jenna Bush Hager was on hand with her sister Barbara Bush, and they had a long line of well-wishers.

Astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space, was promoting his book Endurance. 

And every year I take a photo with the incomparable Adriana Trigiani, whose new book Kiss Carlo is fantastic. My review will post on June 21st.

Hillary Clinton at the Book Expo

I was very excited to hear that Hillary Clinton was going to be the keynote speaker at the 2017 Book Expo. I was looking at my email when the announcement came through and I was able to snag a much-coveted ticket to the event.

There was a huge crowd lined up an hour and a half early to get into the venue. The program began right on time (probably because CSpan 2 was carrying it live), and author Cheryl Strayed, author of the mega-smash, Wild, was in conversation with Ms. Clinton.

Carolyn Reidy, the CEO of Simon & Schuster, publisher of the upcoming Hillary Clinton memoir, introduced her, joking that introducing is a relative term when talking about the first female presidential candidate of a major party, former Secretary of State, Senator and First Lady, since we all know her. She also got a laugh when she said that if only a small portion of the 65 million people who voted for Clinton buy her upcoming book, it will be a massive bestseller.

Clinton received a long standing ovation as she entered, waving to the crowd. Strayed began by asking if Clinton "knows how much we love you, how much you mean to us?" Clinton replied "I hope you know how much you mean to me." Her love and respect for booksellers, librarians and readers choked her up and brought tears to many eyes in the room.

Strayed asked Clinton what her upcoming book would be about, and Clinton replied that it would be about "resilience, where you find the courage to get back up after a painful, really painful experience."

She said that on the campaign trail so many people shared their stories with her. She's learned that "resilience is one of the great gifts to be given in the form of family, friends and faith." She spoke of two people she has been in contact with for years, victims of the 9/11 attack.

One woman was burned so badly, she has had a decade of painful surgeries. Another man was hit by the landing gear of one of the planes. She has kept in close touch with both of these remarkable people, and she said she is "honored and humbled to see how they handle it." That is true resilience in her opinion.

Since this occured at the Book Expo, there was a lot of talk about books. Clinton has always loved reading, and she read every Nancy Drew book as a girl. She liked that Nancy Drew was "such a go-getter- smart, brave, a real role model for me and my friends. She took care of the house, went to school, and solved mysteries."

Clinton also mentioned that she keeps a book log, which contains "every book I ever read as an adult." She read a lot of mysteries after the election- Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, Donna Leon's books and Louise Penny's mysteries set in Three Pines. Clinton gushed about meeting Penny, just like all us book nerds do when we meet a favorite author.

Clinton's talk was captivating and the rapt audience was sad to see it end, but we all look forward to reading her book when it publishes this fall. She even left us a gift on the way out- a signed notecard that now graces my refrigerator.

You can view the entire interview here.

Book Expo 2017- Book Covers

Once I return from the annual Book Expo, I love to go through the books I picked up and check them out. There are so many ways to organize them- by publication date, by author name, or by subject.

This year I took notice of the covers. Book cover art has gotten increasingly more intricate and interesting over the years. It's fun to see what clever art directors come up with to catch the reader's eye.

Women looking away from the camera is something that has been popular. This photo shows three books that feature the protagonist looking away from the camera, giving the effect of longing. I'm patricularly interested in reading Sujata Massey's The Widows of Malabar Hill, about a female lawyer in 1920's India, and these three books are all historical fiction.

From woman facing away on the cover, we have covers where we only see the backs of our protagonists here. Need to Know, about a female CIA agent involved in Russian intrigue seems to be a timely read. (I believe Charlize Theron has optioned this for a movie.) Thrillers tend to like to use this on the cover.

This next one is a new one- covers featuring people with no faces. I guess this can be interpreted as protagonists who are enigmatic?

Then we get the covers with the faces up close and personal, like these two striking books. 

Instead of people, these covers feature buildings on their covers. Brendan Mathews' debut novel The World of Tomorrow, with its Irish immigrant story set in 1939 New York City, looks to be this year's We Are Not Ourselves. Speaking of Irish,  I can never resist a Alice McDermott novel, an Oswego State graduate.

Trees and branches without their leaves will be very popular in the coming months. I'm really looking forward to reading Tayari Jones' An American Marriage. Her previous novel Silver Sparrow was just phenomenal. Eleanor Henderson's The Twelve-Mile Straight is another one I can't wait to read, as I loved her Ten Thousand Saints.

From trees, we move to birds on these covers. Sarah Schmidt's See What I Have Done retells the Lizzie Borden story and I am intrigued by that one.

This vibrant red color is sure to catch the eyes of readers perusing bookstore shelves. Leni Zumas' Red Clocks is geared towards readers of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and will surely benefit from the Hulu adaptation of that book.

These books capitalize on the Gone Girl familiarity by putting girl in the title, but none are of the thriller genre. The Radium Girls is a narrative nonfiction book that will appeal to readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and the cover of The Girls in the Picture is just stunning.

Married women seems to be a lively topic as these three book titles suggest. I can't wait to read Tom Perrotta's Mrs. Fletcher as I have been a fan since Little Children. (And his HBO series The Leftovers just knocked me out.)

Future Book Expo post will discuss some of the events that took place at the Expo. If you attended Book Expo, what were your favorites? Beth Fish Reads has highlighted some of the books she is looking forward to here and here. 

Book Expo 2017- The Editors' Buzz

Book Expo 2017 is off and running and today was the annual Editors' Buzz, where six editors present the upcoming books they are excited about. It was standing room only today and every book sounded like a winner.

Editors' Buzz Panel Books

Annie Philbrick, owner of Bank Square Books and Savoy Book Shop introduced the editors, reading a short bio of each. Jackie Cantor, Senior Editor of Scout Press presented Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent, which is a bestseller in Ireland and won the Crime Novel of the Year.

She opened by reading the killer first sentence- "I expected more of a reaction when I hit her." When Mary reveals to her husband Oliver that she found a secret box he had hidden, he beats her unconscious. The rest of the novel explains how Oliver became this sociopath, in the vein of Dexter and Hannibal Lecter.

Cantor described how author Nugent's "sunny disposition, so nice, so normal" is at odds with her creation Oliver's behavior. Is he morally depraved or insane? We'll have to read to find out.

Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo's Stay With Me was presented by Jennifer Jackson, Senior Editor at Alfred A. Knopf. Yejide is in love with her husband and he with her. They long to start a family, but after four years, they still have no child.

One day her mother-in-law shows up with Funmi, whom she introduces as her son's second wife. Ilesa is devastated; she and her husband had an agreement that she would be his only wife. Yejide is so angry, she gives her mother-in-law food poisoning, and is determined to get pregnant at any cost.

Adebayo is just 28 years-old, and her debut novel is being compared to Lauren Groff's fabulous Fates and Furies, with its focus on a marriage told from two different perspectives.

The editors

Sarah McGrath, Editor in Chief of Riverhead Books passionately spoke of Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling, which tells the story of 14 year-old Turtle, who lives with her survivalist, misogynistic yet charismatic father. When Turtle gets a crush on a sweet, loving boy named Jacob, she sees how different life can be and problems ensue.

McGrath said that reading this book "will renew your faith in transformative power of reading," high praise indeed. She said there is a "jaw-dropping climax" and although there is a darkness to the story, there is also humor and sweetness. And no less than Stephen King has called a modern classic.

Ben George, Senior Editor and Publisher at Little, Brown and Company spoke of Brendan Mathews' The World of Tomorrow, a sweeping novel set in New York City in June of 1939, at the time of the World's Fair. The Great Depression is ending, and America is on the cusp of WWII.

We meet two Irish brothers on their way to New York to see their brother. Set over the course of one week, the three brothers, a jazz musician, a fragile heiress, a Jewish photographer, a priest, a vengeful mob boss and his well-intentioned henchman all collide in this story that features  "big dreams, big love and the price you pay for family." George said that it felt like the documentary, Man On A Wire.

Sally Kim, VP and Editorial Director at Putnam spoke of Chloe Benjamin's The Immmortalists, calling it a "love story of a family". When four young siblings go to a fortune teller, they are forever changed. She has the ability to tell people when they are going to die, so the underlying question is if you know the day you are going to die, how will you live your life?

The story is told chronologically, with each sibling taking turns telling the story that spans five decades. Kim said that it has "a crescendo effect to the climactic end" and with questions of magic versus science and destiny versus fate, this one sounds very intriguing.

The last book is A.J. Finn's The Women in the Window, discussed by Jennifer Brehl, Senior Vice President, Executive Editor and Director of Editorial Development at William Morrow. Brehl said she was "held hostage to the story and characters, with its precise plotting and pitch-perfect voice."

Our narrator is a woman, who is separated from her husband and child, and refuses to leave her apartment. She drinks, takes pills, and watches the perfect Russell family across the way. When she sees something dangerous in the Russells' windows, she calls the police, but no one believes her.

Quite a crowd!

This Hitchcockian-thriller has already sold the movie rights, with Scott Rudin producing a script by Tracy Letts (whom I love!). Brehl let the audience in on a secret she discovered about the author, A.J. Finn, whom everyone believed to be a woman. After raving about the book to her colleagues, she found out that the author was not only a man, but he was an editor who works down the hall from her!

The crowd laughed as Brehl said "I thought we were friends, we go to lunch together" and she never knew he was writing a book.

I was able to fight through the hordes to get a copy of all six books and now my big decision is in which order do I read these fabulous books?

I'll post more about Book Expo 2017 in the next few days, and post photos on Twitter (@bookchickdi) and on Facebook (Diane Short LaRue).