The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

By V. E. Schwab

 

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

I am not entirely sure what I expected but I am pretty sure it is not what I got.  And I should know better, I actually have read some of Schwab's previous books, but this was both better and less sweet than I expected, and perhaps also more fleeting. I dunno, I spent a lot of the first half of the book just kinda going along with things, and then as soon as we got Henry's backstory, I was immediately anti-Henry.  Bitch, Addie just sweated through three hundred years of theft and homelessness and you out there complaining because one of the hundred available opportunities to you just didn't seem right? And cause you got broke up with you're going to jump off a building? So in the sense that Addie does not end up with Henry, I liked it!  Two thumbs up!

I didn't really like Luc either though, so I wasn't entirely pleased she was hanging with him either, plus, I know we get glimpses here and there, but they basically spent twenty or thirty years together and it's swept by in about five pages? After spending a hundred pages on sad-sack Henry? Is that because if we spent more time on Addie and Luc's relationship we wouldn't even consider Henry a viable option, or that we would be mad that she's planning on exiting her relationship with Luc with a bang? {although I have to say, she calls herself cleverer than Luc, but she honestly thought that Luc making a deal with Henry and her finding Henry was a "mistake"? That doesn't bode well for her future strategizing}

I mean, it was a little bait-and-switchy, but since I wasn't ever really attached to Henry, I didn't mind the ending.  Addie herself, honestly, I was a little let down by what she ended up doing with her life - maybe there's more we don't know about, but for someone who can't be injured and will live forever, it took her a hundred years just to leave the country? And then it was by force, so I don't even know if that counts.  Where else is she going? I mean, no wonder she's depressed, she's basically been like one of those old people living in an apartment and never going outside for the last twenty years of their life.  Also, and this is just me, but if I made that deal and couldn't tell people my real name, I would immediately pick a different one that I would just use.  People change their names all the time.  Am I attached to mine? Yes.  If I couldn't tell it to anyone, would I consider going by a new one? Absolutely!  

I just - for all that she seems like she's got a routine and everything down by the 2014 sections and is in a groove, like, what is she doing? She lacks purpose.  So she's a "muse" (and I appreciate that we kind of elide over however inspiring she can be if they forget her as soon as they leave the room) but she's so taken up with this idea about leaving a mark of some kind that she seems to have spent no time considering whether her mark would be worthwhile.  I dunno, maybe I just don't understand artists. 

Stylistically, nothing really bothered me.  The chapters were brief enough that it never felt like it dragged - except for Henry's POV sections - although I think a lot of repetition could have been excised without losing anything. Another reviewer called it "hollow" and I guess I kind of agree with that. It's a good story but not one that gripped me or that I'll be returning to.