THE IMMORTALISTS

Maggie Hoffman narrates this thought-provoking story with a straightforward delivery. She gives the mother, Gertie, a perfect nagging Jewish mother voice and uses pace, tone, and inflection effectively to bring the other characters to life. After the prologue, which finds the four Gold siblings, ages 7 to 13, sneaking off to visit a fortune-teller who tells them the dates of their deaths, the story breaks into four sections that explore how each sibling lives his or her life with that knowledge. There is little interweaving to connect the siblings' lives in adulthood, but the individual stories give a look at four distinctive personalities and their reliance on fate. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2018]