The premise of this novel is one of the most clever I’ve read in a while: four siblings learn the dates of their deaths in 1969 in New York. Benjamin not only explores what people might do having received this knowledge, but also brilliantly meditates on mortality in complex, intriguing ways. From the structure to the siblings’ career paths to how they are haunted (or not) by the dates they were told when they were younger to the historical backdrop of each of the siblings’ individual sections (like the AIDS epidemic in the early 80s before we knew what AIDS was), Benjamin’s story pulled me in and invited me to think about my own mortality. One scene of this book made me outright cry and completely provoked my thinking about life and death and the expectations, fears, and hopes that we have surrounding them. Although the novel, on the surface, might seem like a depiction of sibling relationships (and it is, although maybe not as richly developed as one might hope), what really struck me was how Benjamin was more so invested in probing larger questions about how and why we live our lives. Her prose is sparse yet utterly effective and some of the paths this novel takes felt quirky and unexpected in all the right ways.