558. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: V.E. Schwab
Genre: Fiction, Romance, Fantasy
442 pages, published October 6, 2020
Reading Format: Audiobook on Overdrive
Summary
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue tells the story of Addie LaRue, a French woman who makes a deal with the devil in 1714 to avoid an unwanted arranged marriage. She strikes a bargain that she does not fully appreciate the implications of. She will live forever, but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. We follow Addie over the course of 300 years until she meets a young man who remembers her name and that changes everything.
Quotes
What she needs are stories.
Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.
Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books.
Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”
“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?”
“…it is sad, of course, to forget.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.
“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”
“Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.”
“There is a defiance in being a dreamer”
“Blink, and the years fall away like leaves.”
“Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.”
“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.”
“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”
“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?”
“It is just a storm, he tells himself, but he is tired of looking for shelter. It is just a storm, but there is always another waiting in its wake.”
“The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
“His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.”
“You know,” she’d said, “they say people are like snowflakes, each one unique, but I think they’re more like skies. Some are cloudy, some are stormy, some are clear, but no two are ever quite the same.”
“But this is how you walk to the end of the world. This is how you live forever. Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone.”
“But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things—she would go mad. She has gone mad.”
“I am stronger than your god and older than your devil. I am the darkness between stars, and the roots beneath the earth. I am promise, and potential, and when it comes to playing games, I divine the rules, I set the pieces, and I choose when to play.”
“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.”
“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”
“Humans are so ill-equipped for peace.”
“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.”
“March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly betw
een January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.”
My Take
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was a wonderful read. The author takes an interesting premise, what would happen if you could live forever but no one would remember you, and goes to town with it. Addie is a fascinating character and her repartee with Luke (aka the Darkness) who controls her fate is highly entertaining. I listened to the audio version which was very well done and which I highly recommend.
