By V.E. Schwabb
“What she needs are stories.
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
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.”
I began this audiobook before the end of 2023 and finished just as we said hello to 2024. The fact that this book rang in the new year with me was prophetic, if not a bit ironic. The story, written in somewhat lyrical prose, is a blend of historical and literary fiction with more than a touch of mystical realism.
Addie LaRue is a girl born in provincial France in the turn of the 18th century. She is a bright girl, dazzled by the world beyond her small village—a world that she only knows exists– a world she longs to see.
Addie is a precocious child who loves to draw and is enthralled by the town witch, a spinster in the village who never married, and serves as the town herbologist. A woman who is both revered and feared by the town in equal measure. Addie is drawn to this woman, and the fact that she lives her life on her own terms.
When Addie becomes a teenager and is set to be married off to a village widower with small children he needs help rearing, she is devastated, and on her wedding night, she runs to the forest and calls upon the spirits the old woman had told her about, spirits who can grant wishes and make dreams come true. Except Addie makes a terrible mistake that she pays eternally for; the old woman warned Addie to never make a wish at night, for the spirits and spirits that rule after dark are not of the kind and benevolent sort, but of the dark, malevolent. Leaving her soon-to-be husband at the alter, Addie runs to the forest, closes her eyes shut, and begins to call on anyone—anything that can save her from a life she fears—a small life in a small town, doing nothing more than raising small children. When Addie closes her eyes and starts to pray to whoever is listening, she does not realize that the sun has set, and so she calls her wish into the darkness. Addie’s wish is granted by one of the forest spirits who rules the dark, a entity we come to know as Luc. Luc offers her a life on her own terms, but a life that will come at a cost that young Addie cannot even fathom.
And so Addie’s 300-year saga begins.
With wrapt storytelling and beautiful prose, Schwab takes us along with Addie after her wish is granted—a wish that she is free to live her own life, on her own terms—a wish she is granted—a wish that comes at a great cost.
While Addie can never be mortally wounded, and never age, she is cursed to live forever, a wish that many mortals have dreamed about, yet this wish of hers, granted by the darkest of dark spirits, comes with a cost. Addie will live forever (or as long as she wishes), but she will never be remembered and will never be able to leave physical marks on the world. Any drawing she makes disappears, and any person she meets forgets her as soon as she leaves their site.
She is forced into a sort of 300-year-old groundhog day where she is unable to create any sort of lasting legacy, much less hold a job, have a boyfriend, rent a room, buy a home, make a friend. She is cursed to a life of solitude in a world that she is unable to impress upon in any lasting way. She can make it all end, Luc promises; he will end her curse and take her soul when she is ready to be done with this life. Upon realizing her curse, she is unsure how she will survive. How can she? How can she survive without a roof, without food, and without friends?
Or so she first thinks.
Addie is as precocious a 20-year-old as she was a child, as we soon learn. We, the readers, are taken on a journey through time with Addie. Masterfully blending exquisite metaphoric prose with imagery that puts places right in time, Addie Schwab’s masterpiece is an epic of storytelling that shows us truly what it means to be human and the power we all have that goes beyond the physical realm.
I enjoyed this book on audio, but will most likely enjoy it again soon in print, as I yearn to highlight and annotate Schwab’s sentence’s and feast upon the magic she created with her words.
Most books do not enter the realm of enjoyable reading more than once for me, but this one joins that list.
If you love historical or literary fiction and if you are not afraid of a long read, this book will not disappoint.