“Do you ever feel like you’re running out of time? I don’t mean in that normal, time flies way. I mean feeling like it’s surging by so fast, and you try to reach out and grab it, you try to hold on, but it just keeps rushing away. And every second, there’s a little less time, and a little less air, and sometimes when I’m sitting still, I start to think about it, and when I think about it, I can’t breathe.”
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab is a splendid, painful, and absolutely extraordinary story. Addie LaRue has lived for nearly 300 years. She was born a dreamer, a young woman who didn’t want to waste her life away in the little town she had grown up in, living and dying within the same roads she travelled countless times. She wanted to see the world, explore new things. But this is 1714, and there is no freedom for Addie in her little hometown in rural France. On the night of her arranged marriage, in a bid for freedom, Addie fervently prays to the old gods, not noticing when day slips to night. Darkness answers Addie, and she makes a bargain she had been warned to never make. She had hoped to have time, to never belong to anyone. Now, Addie cannot die, cursed to live forever, but no one will remember her if she leaves them for even a few moments. She can’t even say her own name. She is desperate to not be reduced to a shadow, and to never give in to the darkness that has damned and blessed her at once. Addie lives stubbornly, carefully understanding the limits of her existence, and finding ways to leave her mark through artists, writers, creators seeking inspiration. She has lived for so long, but not once in 300 years has someone remembered Addie LaRue. Until Henry Strauss, a young man with a secret of his own, who remembers the curious girl who came into his book store the previous day.
“If some part of her wavered, if some small part wanted to give in, it did not last beyond a moment. There is a defiance in being a dreamer.”
This novel is a masterpiece. Addie’s life is delicately curated, a provocative journey of grief, joy, hurt, and hope. Schwab takes a look at the most relatable issues – who wants to grow old, be unloved, never get a chance to explore the world around them? Through Addie LaRue, Henry Strauss, and the shadow that names itself Luc, for the first of Addie’s dreams, you understand what it means to be human. Addie’s time over three centuries is hard-won, morsels of her existence carefully scattered across countless works to give herself some meaning, as she quietly learns the strength of ideas from the dark that took her permanence. Luc, an inhuman being with immense power, is a mockery of a human, Addie’s worst enemy and closest confidant in one. Henry is a simple man, never enough for the people around him, a naive boy who makes the wrong kind of bargain with the wrong kind of entity. Their fates are inextricably bound, characters that Schwab brings to life with her careful words. The entire cast of the novel, from Henry’s never-approving family to Addie’s countless loves, are fully fleshed out and wonderfully alive, set against backdrops and put in situations that test the human psyche. Stunningly heartbreaking in it’s simultaneous permanence and impermanence, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a bittersweet novel that deeply explores the mysteries of forming relationships, creating new memories, and experiencing life in all its splendor.
“How do you walk to the end of the world? One step at a time.”
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