I’ve enjoyed the half-dozen novels I’ve read from V.E. Schwab. Her novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is something she’s been working on in some form for the better part of a decade. That lent the novel an air of Import even before I opened the cover and began flipping pages. This is an epic, powerful, sweeping novel about an immortal girl, a hasty bargain, and heartbreak over the centuries. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is more than a collection of pages between book covers that tells a story, it is an Experience.
A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.
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.
The starting point for this novel is somewhat familiar, in the early years of the 18th Century in France, a young girl named Addie is being forced into a marriage in which she has no desire to participate. She flees her family in the darkness and begs for help, she wants to “live and be free.” Her pleas are answered by something dark and rather amorphous. Of course, bargains made with spirits during the dark hours don’t always work in the favor of those headstrong, youthful characters begging for release. Addie finds herself in something of a Faustian bargain, doomed to an immortal life without attachment. Nobody remembers who she is, despite being over 300 years old by the “current” time of the novel in the 20th Century.
Schwab has always had a gift for great prose and fine storytelling, but what she’s done in Addie LaRue is a leveling up from a great foundation. The words flow together in a beautiful, entrancing harmony. From the opening page, the story was a powerfully addictive thing largely due to Schwab’s evocative and immersive prose. She expertly crafts Addie’s story over the years, rendering a life encased in sorrow, but with sparks of hope. I found Addie to be a bold, intelligent, regretful soul. Her “tormentor,” the spirit who struck the bargain which gave her the “gift” of immortality, appears in Addie’s life throughout Addie’s life in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries. Her barbs with this spirit, (is he THE Devil? Or just an evil spirit?) which show Addie’s growth into a formidable individual in her own right. As much as the spirit needles her, she grows a thick skin and soon begins to frustrate the spirit. Over the centuries and decades Addie finds herself drawn to artists of all cloths, giving them inspiration.
Of course, about halfway through the novel, Addie finds a soul who does remember her when she visits his bookshop two days in a row. The novel takes a bit of a turn once she encounters Henry and Schwab provides ample backstory about Henry, doled out expertly and deliberately intertwined with Addie’s story. There’s great emotion in all of it, equal parts sorrow and hope, all humanity despite Addie thinking herself unattached to humanity because of her immortal life.
Throughout the entirety of my reading experience, I couldn’t help but find resonance with the 1986 fantasy film, Highlander. The protagonist of that movie is an immortal who has lived for centuries, has seen people he cares about live and die and he spent most of his life in a solitary existence. That’s about where the similarities end, although I think some of Queen’s music (they provided the soundtrack to Highlander) works nicely with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, particularly the haunting, powerful, sorrow-filled ballad, ”Who Wants to Live Forever.”
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue just might be V.E. Schwab’s magnum opus, a novel that displays a great artist at her height of creative powers. Just like the entirety of the novel, the ending is parts sorrow and hope. There’s a wink of potential for a follow-up, but this is the kind of novel that might be best served standing on its own. (But I’d read more about Addie!)
Highly, highly recommended.
© 2020 Rob H. Bedford
Published by Tor Books | October 2020
Hardcover | 442 Pages
https://www.veschwab.com/
Excerpt: https://www.torforgeblog.com/2020/09/23/excerpt-the-invisible-life-of-addie-larue-by-v-e-schwab/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
This sounds like it springs off “Enoch Soames” by Max Beerbohm, a really wonderfully funny short story about a writer who wants to be immortalized even though he can’t really sell his own work.