Thoughts have wings.

This one is an interesting look at the relationships of four siblings through the lens of one shared experience in childhood. After hearing that a fortune-teller in the neighborhood can tell you the exact date of your death, Daniel (11) coaxed his siblings Varya (13), Klara (9) and Simon (7) to pay her a visit. Four bored kids looking for something to pass the time in the hot city summer are each given a date that will shape the trajectory of their lives.

They began together: before any of them were people, they were eggs, four out of their mother’s millions. Astonishing, that they could diverge so dramatically in their temperaments, their fatal flaws – like strangers caught for seconds in the same elevator.

The youngest siblings chase life. Simon drops out of high school to run away with his recently graduated sister Klara. San Francisco in the 1980’s is a place where they both can discover themselves. Simon can more freely live his life as a young gay man. Klara can work on her magic show, carrying on the tradition of her grandmother. Simon hurries to experience everything while he can; the good and the bad. Klara seeks the possibilities of life through magic; an alternate reality.

The two oldest siblings find comfort instead in routine and structure. They both go to college, forge careers and take on the responsibility of caring for their mother. Daniel becomes a doctor in the military deciding who is fit for service. The person who decides the fate of others. Varya becomes a scientist focusing on longevity–how to keep death at bay and live a longer life.  Experimenting with herself as well as her lab animals, she “lives a lesser life to live a longer one”.

Each of them carries the weight of the fortune teller’s predictions. Are their deaths fated or have they lived their lives with an eye toward their death? How much of what happens to them is self-fulfilling prophecy?

…the power of words. They weaseled under door cracks and through keyholes. They hooked into individuals and wormed through generations.

How would knowing the exact date of your death effect how you live your life? It’s certainly not a new idea, but Benjamin takes an interesting spin on it here. It’s not a single person but a family. It’s not a solitary pursuit.

There were parts of this book that I loved and parts that were confusing and ultimately unsatisfying.  The book is broken into 4 parts: one for each sibling. In a couple of places, it was unclear to me exactly what happened, particularly in Daniel’s story. The end of Klara’s story didn’t really ring true to me. Benjamin seemed to be setting up something and then took a completely different turn. Had I not become invested in these characters, I wouldn’t have found these things as problematic, but I did. I have become tired of a lot of contemporary writers who center their stories around navel gazing  and insufferable characters that grow up in New York City. Thankfully, this one had characters that I could get behind and Benjamin is a good writer. Anyone who can come up with this gem has some talent:

She understands, too, the loneliness of parenting, which is the loneliness of memory – to know that she connects the future unknowable to her parents with a past unknowable to her child.