The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: V.E. Schwab

Product Information

The cruel twist is that going forward, no one will remember Addie, except for Luc. What did you think about how Addie’s initial experiences with this curse? How was she able to survive? A secret kept. A record made. The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.” After being abandoned in Florence, Addie ends up staying in Italy. Her departure from France has awakened an interest in seeing more place. She meets Matteo, an artist, who sketches her. Thus, she learns how to leave her mark on this world. In 1714, Addie is 23 and engaged, but she longs to be free. As she prays to the old gods, the night falls and the devil answers. Addie asks to live freely and to have more time. As a gift, she offers her favorite possession, a carved wooden ring, but the devil rejects it. Instead, she offers the devil her soul when she is done with it, and he accepts. She is given eternal life, but no one can remember her (she wanted to "live freely"). As soon as she leaves their sight, they forget her.

Were you surprised when Henry revealed he made the deal with Luc too or did you figure it out earlier? In the instruments that lean against the walls. In the scribbled lines and notes scattered on tables—bars of half-remembered melodies mixed in with grocery lists and weekly to-do’s. But here and there, another hand—the flowers he’s started keeping on the kitchen sill, though he can’t remember when the habit started. The book on Rilke he doesn’t remember buying. The things that last, even when memories don’t. Schwab’s writing is warm and intense, and the passages set in the past often make you feel as if you’re reading by candlelight...The book is an elegant comment on the erasure of women from recorded history, but not a pointed one; you never feel that Addie LaRue is a metaphor. She is a woman fighting literally to be seen while bearing witness to her own life, and I rooted for her throughout.”— New York Times Book Review In Paris, Addie pays for a room, but she is tossed out when they don’t recognize her. When they break her bird carving, it doesn’t mend itself. Desperate and homeless, Addie prostitutes herself for money, losing her virginity in the process.A career triumph...Her propulsive, lyric prose is here, her morally complex, entrancing characters, her unique shape of magic, all wrought within this entirely fresh premise that will no doubt become a long-lasting favorite...Addie defies genre, blending romance and history, fantasy and monstrosity, cresting through peaks of time, centered on a young (and also, technically very old) woman with both less and more agency than anyone alive...romantic, ambitious, and defiantly, deliberately hopeful. Epic and intimate at once, it asks what art is...Schwab is simply one of the most skilled writers working in her genre...The feat of this book is frankly awe-inspiring.”— Tor.com Once, the darkness teased the girl as they strolled along the Seine, told her that she had a “type,” insinuating that most of the men she chose—and even a few of the women—looked an awful lot like him. Henry and Addie try to make the most of Henry’s last weeks of life. They enjoy just being together, and they drive upstate to look at the stars. Henry accepts that his end is near and makes peace with how everything has turned out. Unbeknownst to Henry, Addie sneaks out to meet with Luc shortly before the day Henry is scheduled to die. She makes a new deal with Luc: she will be Luc’s lover until he no longer wants her. In exchange, Luc will let Henry live. Before long, Henry finds himself drinking again. He realizes he is invisible to people. They find him funny, charming, ambitious or whatever else it is they want him to be, regardless of anything he does. They love him, but that love is not real. What do you think of Addie’s choices? If you were in her situation, would you have done the same? Why or why not?

In 1719, Addie discovers chocolate, which is rare, but she steals it from a marchioness whose home she’s secretly staying in. The shadow pays his annual visit once again, but this time he asks her to dinner. She is skeptical at first, but eats hungrily. She also reluctantly agrees to call him Luc, the name she had in mind for the stranger in her daydreams. At the time it, it was short for Lucien, but now she realizes it makes perfect sense for Lucifer. She tells him that she has no intention of ever giving him her soul, and that night battle lines are drawn as he readies for the challenge. Henry goes on a date with Vanessa the barista. However, when Henry asks Vanessa why she likes him, she says that it’s because he’s outgoing, funny, and ambitious — things that don’t really describe him. A week later she says she loves him and tries to light Tabitha’s old thing on fire. Henry breaks up with Vanessa as she begs him not to. Of course when you've lived three hundred years, there's an awful lot of content to cover, and so Schwab has to be selective in terms of the parts of Addie's history that we witness and the parts that are left untold. I appreciate that some readers were a little disappointed by this and had perhaps expected the scope of the story to be wider in terms of the places Addie has travelled and the events she has witnessed through history. However, personally I appreciated the more personal story that Schwab was trying to tell, and thought she structured it well accordingly. It made sense to focus more on Addie's early years after the curse as that was when she struggled most to adapt to it, and whilst I would have loved to see Addie on her travels more, having the past narrative mostly in France worked for me, as it was the place Addie always still identified as home and so resonated with her character. Quite often we home in on Addie in the past on the anniversary of her curse, as this is when she most often interacts with Luc (the name she gives the God or Devil who cursed her), and again I thought this was an effective way of keeping the narrative moving forward and conveying their long standing history together.Whilst I appreciated that Schwab was focused more on the implications of the curse and what Addie had lost, exploring themes such as identity, memory, loneliness and connecting with others as well as leaving a mark on the world, that is not to say that if Schwab ever decided to write a spin off book following Addie on her travels through time, I would not lap it up, as I would be intrigued to delve further into her thoughts on a changing world and experiencing different cultures. In the present, Addie learns that Henry's deal was only for a year. After that, he'll die. He has a month left. Addie calls on Luc to beg him to change his deal with Henry. Luc refuses until Addie promises herself to him in exchange for releasing Henry. Luc accepts. By 1715, Addie is more street smart. One night, after she has drugged a man laudanum to take his money, the shadow appears. The shadow reminds her that he can simply take her soul now and end her misery, if she’s done with this life. Addie angrily declines.