Harlow and the monkey lab have many critics around here. Here’s an example: https://isthmus.com/news/cover-story/amy-kerwin-primates-inc-sanctuary-macaque/
As for the book: it kept my interest but I was very annoyed by certain aspects of it (many of them have been commented on above).
Interview with Chloe Benjamin: https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Immortalists-Author-Chloe-Benjamin-Interview-44449364
Her answer to the research question is interesting. She incorporates parts of her own life, particularly into Simon’s story. She’s a ballet dancer from San Francisco who grew up with gay parents – the last person who would be guilty of a gay stereotype, so I’ll retract my earlier comment on that.
Below is from another interview:
I was glad we didn’t get Varya’s death. I think there’s enough magical realism in the book that it’s quite possible she too will die on her given day. I knew quite a few Simon’s - I miss them.
^ I love this; it’s both hopeful and comforting. It reminds me of Atul Gawande’s comment in Being Mortal, “Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.” About his own father, Gawande wrote that even in his last couple of days, he gave instructions about unfinished projects. Gawande further writes:
I finished last night. I haven’t read the comments yet. Here is my initial reaction. I was not in love with this book. Too depressing. I was okay at the beginning, saw a lot potential in the story. In the middle I was not impressed. Again, too depressing for me and not enought character development. I thought Varya’s story was the best. My attitude was probably influenced by the fact that I knew she wasn’t going to die. After I finished the book and thought about it more, I found I wasn’t as fond of the Varya’s story as I was when I was reading it. I give this book a “meh” rating. I don’t feel like I wasted my time reading it, but won’t be recommending to friends.
What a beautiful and comforting statement. Hopsice workers are pretty amazing people. My experience with hospice nurses during my mother’s death was incredibly comforting. I am so sorry for your loss, ignatius.
Klara lost control of her life over the years. The prophecy of her death date haunted her and became more real after Simon died on his date. She drank too much, which also took away her control. She convinced herself that Simon and her father were waiting for her on the other side of death. She must have wondered if she would die during her show. Committing suicide returned control of her life, and death, back to her.
I didn’t think of that but yeah: I think you hit that nail on its head. If Klara believed that she would die that day, then committing suicide allowed her control over how it would happen. Klara had already had an accident performing the Jaws of Life and, more to the point, her grandmother did die performing it. (I had forgotten that Gertie’s mother died in a high-profile Jaws of Life performance.) Klara hadn’t wanted Vegas and her opening night - performing the Jaws of Life under spotlight in a “high-profile” venue - was on the date she had been predicted to die. The fact that Simon died on his predicted date had to be unnerving. Suicide seems less irrational when you take all that into account.
Per Chloe Benjamin, “Klara’s grandmother, Klara senior, was inspired by a real person named Tiny Kline, a Hungarian immigrant and circus performer who originated the ‘Jaws of Life’ (she was also the first Tinkerbell at Disneyland).”
https://www.bookweb.org/news/qa-chloe-benjamin-author-january’s-1-indie-next-list-pick-102412
Tiny Kline died of cancer, though – not in an accident. Here’s her Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Kline
But far more interesting, here’s her act. It’s incredible!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpnZhoNcwto
Wow. You’ve got to have all your teeth to do that one.
Thanks for the youtube clip. I knew the Jaws of Life thing must be a real thing, but oh wow!
I wanted to believe Klara’s knocks were real, but the other party of me thought - what a stupid way for the dead to communicate with you! Unlike the magic show, there’s no reason for them to be secretive. So yeah, Klara had lost it. The family seemed mentally fragile in general. At least Simon really enjoyed his all too brief life. But Klara, too me was also one of the most interesting characters in her interior life. I liked this line. “If nothing else Judaism had taught her to keep running, no matter who tried to hold her hostage. It had taught her to create her own opportunities, to turn rock into water, and water into blood. It had taught her that such things were possible.”
Varya tells Simon that she didn’t have the aborition because “It’s as though I was trying to compensate - for the fact that I didn’t engage in life, not fully. I thought - I hoped - you would.”
Daniel’s section was so irritatingly innacurate that I almost didn’t finish the book. And it didn’t have to be that way. He could have developed PTSD or have been injured during deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. He would have been sidelined, assigned to a Wounded Warrior Brigade, or been awaiting a Medical Board which would have been a painful situation, outside of his control. It would have given him the same feelings of loss of control, and would have been believable.
As written, here are some inaccuracies within the first few pages of his section:
Assignment to West Point as a physician is as cushy a job as as active duty Army physician could get. Young, healthy cadets who are still in college do not present a physician with difficulties or long hours. “High stakes and unpredictable, but he was depleted by thr hours and relentless suffering” is the complete opposite of what he would have encountered there.
Active duty physicians are not assigned to MEPS (military entrance processing station) jobs. Ever. Those are contract jobs done by civilian doctors, often retired (former active duty), but there are no active duty slots at MEPS.
In 2006, any active duty physician who was deployable had either already been deployed or was on a short list to have been deployed. We were four years onto an unending war. Everyone was deploying.
The threat of an Article 15 for insubordination wasn’t reasonable under the circumstances described.
There aren’t three other doctors hanging around waiting to take the place of one who is suspended awaiting a disciplinary hearing.
This was all within the first three pages of the chapter.
I wanted to throw the book against a wall.
Exactly what it means to “live life fully” is the ongoing question in The Immortalists. I think there’s irony in the fact that Varya, the most long-lived (presumably all the way to age 88) is the one–by her own admission–who is least engaged in life. As mentioned above, Simon and Klara give it their all during the short time allotted to them, and Daniel–well, if nothing else, he goes out with a bang, not a whimper ;).
It’s also ironic that Varya works in a vivarium, which, “in Latin, means ‘place of life’” (p. 284).
Gertie is a bit of an enigma. As much as she loves her children, there’s a suggestion that she is not living the life she would have chosen for herself:
Interestingly, though, when Varya has the option to immerse herself in her career instead of child-rearing, Gertie very much wants her to choose the latter.
@eastcoascrazy, thanks for that info. What’s weird is that Chloe Benjamin speaks at length in almost every interview about the years of research she poured into the novel. Granted most of those interviews focus on the research required for Varya’s story (the primate lab) and Klara’s story (magic), but she does say this about Daniel:
I guess Chloe Benjamin’s “friend in the Air Force” didn’t do a very good job as fact-checker. She should have stuck with her original plan to have Daniel be an architect of Jewish museums.
Sorry about all the typos. Boy I should not post with severe jet lag! (I’m in Hong Kong so I am 12 hours off from my usual time zone and still short on sleep from the long plane ride.) I think EastCoastCrazy said pretty much what I would say. My son joined the Navy last year and my impression was definitely that the doctors processing him were not in a stressful job at all.
I also just did not think that Daniel seemed like the type to have wanted to be a military doctor.
I agree. I also thought he was too smart and curious to want to be in a job that basically required him to push papers all day long.
Waving “hello” to all. As it turns out, I haven’t had a chance to finish the book; I’m at 60%; we had weekend guests, plus I’m getting ready to go on a “European Family Adventure” with my 90 year old father, one of my brothers and his wife.
At this point I’m somewhat “meh” about the book. Don’t actively dislike it, but it most likely won’t end up on my all-time favorites list.
I’ll check in again after finishing.
Wow, @CBBBlinker, have a wonderful trip!
I think Daniel is an underdeveloped character. Maybe if Benjamin had fleshed him out a little bit more, she would have written a different scenario for his profession (and for that matter, for his death). He and Mira have a love match–the healthiest domestic relationship in the book, I’d say–which also made his behavior at the end so peculiar. I know that people do “snap,” but it seemed off to me.
Has anyone seen the Coen Brothers dark comedy “A Serious Man”? It’s the story of a middle-age Jewish man whose life begins falling to pieces. I kept picturing Michael Stuhlbarg as Daniel.
For me, The Immortalists shows the amazing strength (and mystery) of the sibling bond. With the exception of Klara and Simon, the four siblings do not interact as adults. In fact, they do their best to avoid family gatherings, if possible. Yet, all their actions seem infused by thoughts of their siblings and the tie that binds them together — and they are haunted (in Klara’s case, literally) by those who die first.
I have six siblings, so I understand that bond. But we are connected as adults—constant, daily interaction and an ongoing seven-way email thread that would probably be a family therapist’s goldmine. I wonder how the siblings in The Immortalists could sustain their bond with so little meaningful contact. Their connections were mostly short angry phone calls and the rare, awkward holiday gathering. I also want to say that there is no way one of my siblings could carry a baby to term without the others finding out. Just NO way. I do see how it was possible in Varya’s case because of her physical and emotional distance from Klara and Daniel, but that begs the question…how close are they, really?
I think that Daniel’s MEP job reflects the author’s desire to put him in the position of choosing life or death (I know, I know, in a convoluted sense) for others. It differs from him just having PTSD or some such, as that involves only him. Instead, in a sense, it’s a step closer to the gypsy handing out a death date for his young siblings (his idea to go to her) and now he wants to make sure that he does it right. Think guilt over Simon and Klara.
Does he feel that in a sense he gave Simon and Klara license to die by taking them to the gypsy? I think so.
Now, I’m not saying Chloe Benjamin got details right. Obviously she didn’t. I do think she wanted it to tie the MEP posting to her theme - even in a roundabout way. She wanted Daniel to have that power to choose, to correct his mistake over and over, young man by young man.
I was bothered by the young men - Simon included - who died so quickly once the first symptoms of AIDS appeared. I think AIDS was much slower - death symptom by symptom, wasting away by degree. Benjamin got that wrong for me - even though she lived in SF. I just finished And the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts. Really really good nonfiction. Highly recommend it. Anyway, it played into how I felt when Richie dies so quickly - page 87.