“The Immortalists” by Chloe Benjamin (2018)

“Varya is thirteen.”

It’s not a unique idea in fiction, this: if you could find out when you were going to die, would you? Personally, I don’t think I would. It’s too much pressure. Better to not know, rather than sit and obsess about it and miss out on the life you could be having. After all, what if it’s wrong? But I’m not one of the Gold family.

The Gold children – Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon – are living in New York at the tail end of the sixties when they learn there’s a woman in the nei...