the invisible life of addie larue by v. e. schwab
a love letter to living a life worth remembering
“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.”
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Have you ever read a book so beautiful, so magical that it feels like you’ve been enchanted? Because that’s what my reading experience with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue felt like.
I’ve loved V. E. Schwab and her work for years — I highly recommend her “A Darker Shade of Magic” trilogy. And yet it took me such a long time to pick up this book. I knew Schwab’s writing would be flawless, but I was worried the book was being hyped up too much on social media and that my expectations would be too high so I wouldn’t enjoy it. You bet I’m so eternally grateful to be proven wrong.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue trapped my soul from beginning to end, carving a permanent space in my heart to reside forever. It’s my new favourite book. It’s a masterclass in writing and storytelling.
And, most importantly, it’s unforgettable.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue spans across three hundred years, manoeuvring between two timelines to tell the life story of Adeline ‘Addie’ LaRue.
In France 1714, Addie makes a desperate and life-changing deal with a mysterious god in the forest to live forever in exchange for her soul. However, this god of darkness and shadows, later known throughout the story as Luc, also curses her to be forgotten by everyone she ever meets. For hundreds of years, Addie navigates the world mostly alone, yearning and hurting, tormented at times by Luc’s surprise visits, forging relationships with people for only brief instances until she is ultimately forgotten again. She does make small imprints, these subtle impressions on the history of art and music, yet the artists and creatives she inspires have no memory of this beautiful girl with seven freckles on her face. To them she was a dream, a figment of their imagination. A fictional being they’ve conjured up. I can’t imagine anything sadder.
But something changes in New York 2014. Addie crosses paths with a brokenhearted Henry Strauss who says the most emotionally charged words to ever exist in her long life: “I remember you”. Three hundred years is a long time to be alone, to be continuously forgotten, and so Addie clings to the hope that her chance to be happy has finally come. Yet this strange boy seems like such an anomaly, an impossibility, another potential for loss and heartbreak. Could Henry finally be her chance to be remembered?
V. E. Schwab is truly a master storyteller. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is so beautifully written, in my opinion as glorious as poetry, with so many transfixing descriptions that captured both the beauty and the ugliness of being human. Schwab always sculpts her characters as though they have truly existed. Like they have roamed the earth at some point, like she met them in the real world and immortalised their likeness through the written word. But the characters of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue feel particularly more real, more devastatingly human than the rest of her work. I shared their hurt, their yearning, their love, their hate. And I understood their hopes, their dreams, their fears. They became people I cared for, thinking about them even when I wasn’t reading, which made the story only the more heartbreaking.
Yet despite the heart-wrenching sadness that seems to drip relentlessly from the book’s pages, this tale is surprisingly quiet and has a more leisurely pace — reminiscent, I feel, to The Secret History’s vibe and structure. This allows for a deeper examination of its characters, which is what I love the most as a reader because I felt so close to each of them in the end. And it also makes us feel like the story continues long after its final pages. However, this writing style might not appeal to readers who like more fast-paced reads and stories with clear resolutions. But I still hope you give it a try.
There are so many moments in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue where I could see myself reflected in the story. It was like Schwab reached into my mind and put my innermost thoughts and feelings into words. Addie LaRue’s desire to live a life that’s worthy of remembrance resonated with me the most. I think this is something we all feel at some point, but what we have to discover for ourselves is how we exactly want to be remembered. Addie reminds us to ask: What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? How do you want to create ripples, big or small? The more I reflect on these questions I know that for me I want to leave my mark on the world through my own stories and characters. To know that I’ve left a small piece of my soul behind like that would be the ultimate dream come true.
I also found myself resonating with how Henry Strauss feels so lost in his twenties, like everyone else in his life is passing him by:
“Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.”
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
It was this quote that made me grow to love Henry so much. Perhaps because he’s a mirror and as I read his struggles I could see myself reflected in him. It can be so unsettling to realise time is running out, that it’s slipping between your fingers like water, to worry that one decision can either make or derail your life. I read an incredible post recently by
titled “The Fear of Regret”. It beautifully words these often complicated feelings of becoming paralysed in your quest to live that reminded me a lot of Henry’s arc in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. If you want a sneak peek into Henry’s feelings before reading this book, I encourage you to read Soph’s piece.But I think that Henry’s character is even more complex due to his deep need to be liked. Sometimes it’s so strong that he fears that somebody will actually see the real him, because what if they don’t like him. So he moulds himself into the perfect son, the perfect friend, because then he can control whether he’ll be liked. But the consequences of this is that nobody knows the real Henry Strauss. This touched me in ways I struggle to describe. I guess for so long I carved myself up into little pieces, creating identities that I knew would make me easier to digest for others. But in the process I lost who I was as a whole. Never mind other people never knowing the real me, did I even know my true self? Seeing these similar feelings reflected back to me in Henry was like being slapped in the face. Other people actually feel this way too? I’m not alone in my thoughts and feelings? It was almost comforting to read in that aspect. There’s really nothing better than having those heavy feelings you carry around validated in a book.
And I can’t finish this piece without touching on the relationships Addie has with Henry and Luc. I was equally in love with them both.
I love the tenderness between Addie and Henry, who find each other in a world that feels impossible for either to navigate. Their blossoming romance comes from both their desires to have companionship, to be seen as they are, to appreciate life’s ever-unfolding beauties, and to be remembered and loved. It felt almost sacred to read as their relationship deepened, like I was peering into something beautiful and private between two people trying to piece themselves back together again. I was nervous the entire way through the book, wondering what was going to transpire between them. I desperately kept turning to the next page, the next chapter, because my heart needed to know how their story ended.
But I was also drawn into the relationship between Addie and Luc. Their paths have continued to cross for hundreds of years and up until she met Henry, Luc has been the only one to remember her. But Luc is monstrous, possessive, terrifying, obsessive, violent, untethered and cutthroat — which makes their complicated relationship all the more interesting because Addie won’t back down to this cruel and moody immortal. Sure it’s toxic, that’s obvious. It goes beyond enemies to lovers into something much darker, much more painful. But their dynamic is still irresistible. I found myself leaning into the story more as Luc appeared on the page, excited to see how the two of them would interact in a new year, a new decade, a new century. And their ending is perhaps my favourite element of the entire book.
I will forever adore and remember the story of Addie LaRue.
It made me yearn and crave and love. It made me feel seen and validated. And perhaps, most importantly, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue made me want to strive for a life worthy of remembrance.
Links:
Q&A: V. E. Schwab, Author of ‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’
V.E. Schwab on Curses, Creative Vulnerability, and Addie LaRue
V.E. Schwab on the 'defiant joy' of her epic novel The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Favourite Quotes:
“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?”
“Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because visions weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades.... Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end... everyone wants to be remembered.”
“I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”
“Do you know how to live three hundred years?” she says. And when he asks how, she smiles. “The same way you live one. A second at a time.”
“Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky.”
“And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it. Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow? Were the moments of beauty worth the year of pain? And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says 'Always.”
Thank you so much for reading my love letter to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. This book has such a special place in my heart and I already wish that I could read it for the first time again. I’d say I would sell my soul, but I think that may be in bad taste for this one haha. I’ll just have to settle for a reread sometime in the future.
Have you read this incredible book? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Until next time,
- Madeline
Thank you so, so much for including little old me in this review. That quote alone has sold me on The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue but it sounds so interesting. I love anything where people deal with living forever and the pros/cons, and this twist of people forgetting her sounds so interesting. Will deffo be picking this up!
👍🏾