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

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The night that Henry is supposed to die, he and Addie go to the rooftop from which Henry nearly jumped exactly one year ago. There, Addie tells Henry about the new deal she made with Luc. The news devastates Henry, but Addie tells him she’s lived enough life—now it’s Henry’s turn to make the most of his. She makes Henry promise to remember her, and then she vanishes. She wakes up in the bed of a man named Toby. She told Toby her name is Jess because she cannot tell anyone her real name. When he wakes, he will have forgotten the previous night. As she leaves, she knows he will forget her by the time he closes the door. This section opens with an image of a suspended metal heart, punctured by holes, entitled Open to Love. By Muriel Strauss (design) and Lance Harringer (manufacture). It’s an interactive installation where visitors pour different types of liquid into it. The book has been released, sold as fiction. Henry is a character in the book. There’s no author on the cover. The dedication simply reads I remember you. Addie goes to see the book in a London bookshop. Luc appears, in a gloating mood.

In the vein of The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life , The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab's genre-defying tour de force. 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”*** In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.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. Henry - Works at a bookstore in New York while trying to live his life to the fullest. And he happens to be able to see a girl that has never been remembered before. 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. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is the kind of book you encounter only once in a lifetime. . . . A defiant, joyous rebellion against time, fate, and even death itself—and a powerful reminder that the only magic great enough to conquer all of it is love.”— Peng Shepherd, author of The Book of M In Part Seven, Henry lives and writes a book based on the stories that Addie has told him. He publishes the book, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, as fiction and without an author. Luc thinks he's won, but Addie knows that her new deal only requires her to stay with him for as long as he desires. Addie plans to break his heart and drive him away.

This section opens with an acrylic painting of seven dots on a monochromatic canvas of greys. By artist Samantha Benning. Another year later, outside the Paris dress shop, the shadow appears in the form of the stranger she once dreamt of. He encourages her, again, to surrender her soul to him. Again she declines. I see someone who cares,” she says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.”***In 2014, Addie meets a man named Henry Strauss who can somehow remember her and speak her name. The pair become romantically involved until the day that Addie realizes that Henry only has 35 days left to live per conditions of his deal with Luc. Were you surprised when Henry revealed he made the deal with Luc too or did you figure it out earlier? I have one and only one complaint for this and it is that I did want a little more time with Addie and the Dark together bantering and fighting throughout the years. Also, the ending may not sit well with everyone, but I thought it fitting. I think that it is how Addie feels at that moment but I remember the Dark is patient and will most likely change her mind down the road. Time for them is still vastly different.

Addie takes Henry to The Fourth Rail, a bar and club that located in an abandoned subway tunnel. It had been her idea, a club she inspired someone else to build. They dance, they kiss in the rain, and they sleep together. Poetic and heartrending, The Invisible Life of Addie Larue is perfect for fans of time travel stories, historical fiction, and fantasy alike." — The Register-Herald 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. This story is not going to be for everyone. I think it is going to be a love it or hate it with little in between for most. I found it fascinating with the beautiful prose and interesting way that Addie came to see her life. I for the most part enjoyed this tale of a girl trapped at twenty-three with no way to leave a mark on the world and forgotten by anyone who meets her in the blink of an eye.

This entire story truly is a love letter to art and the beautiful, awe inspiring, mind-blowing way stories are held within art, therefore held in so many hearts forever. Maybe even creating and inspiring other art, to make the sweetest ripple effect of them all. Art and stories are so powerful because they have the power to heal wounds that are too deep to be touched by other things. From feeling love, to feeling not alone, to inspiring, to escape, to be thought provoking, to be educational, to make you realize things you have been forced to internalize and unlearn, to something as simple yet as hard as happiness. Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”*** 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. Addie finds Estele’s hut and uses a lantern flame to start the hearth. Fifty years in, and she’s still learning what the curse prevents and permits her to do. (“She cannot make a thing, but she can use it. She cannot break a thing, but she can steal it. She cannot start a fire, but she can keep it going.”)

There is no particular art to literary fiction that doesn’t exist in fiction of other genres, and V. E. Schwab’s new book The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue isn’t just an amazing book for its genre; it’s an amazing book, full stop.. .a gorgeous, immersive story...Schwab is an inclusive, ambitious, and exacting writer, and she doesn’t let either her characters or her readers off the hook...This book doesn’t blend genres, or even transcend genre.”— Chicago Review of Books Addie is spending the day with a man named Max when Luc interrupts and sends him away. He takes her to the Cicada Club where Frank Sinatra is playing. Luc admits to her that he wants her. They dance and kiss and make love. In the morning, Luc notes that he is a creature of darkness and must leave, but Addie simply draws the blinds. In time, Addie learns new ways to circumvent the rules of her curse. Though she can’t get people to remember her, she can model for and inspire various artists who then recreate the “idea” of her in their paintings, sculptures, and music. In this way, Addie leaves a lasting impression on people’s lives, even as the physical memory of her erodes. The premise is gripping, but it’s the author’s writing with its sentient quality—as though you can hear each word as it takes shape on the paper like a whisper in your ear, that unmistakable storyteller cadence that could turn a street corner into a sacred place—that made this novel so winning to me.” 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.”***

Section-by-Section Summary

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