Addie La Rue is one of the most unforgettable women one would come across. The tragedy – no one remembers her. Born in Villon-Sur-Sarthe, France, in the late seventeenth century, a girl with seven freckles’ thirst for living drives her to desperate measures.
In a bid to live and have adventures of her own, she calls upon any God who would listen to her pleas. “Never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” The God who answers is the God of the night – the devil. She makes a Faustian deal – her soul for a chance to live, for freedom.
it is finally the time
cr: the invisible life of addie larue pic.twitter.com/Ao7VhfCte3
— ayla (@aylaswar) September 2, 2021
The devil has a churlish sense of humor. She wants to belong to no one. Now, she cannot. Since no one can remember her, she is truly invisible. In return for the immortal life, lonely existence is her curse. She cannot leave her mark upon the world, a trace of her existence. Her curse – no one can remember her – but she is given a perfect memory. She cannot forget.
“…it is sad, of course, to forget.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.
To remember when no one else does.”
Fast forward three hundred years, the reader meets the Addie La Rue of the present. Living from city to city, from Paris to London, to Berlin, to Illinois, she is the living embodiment of history. She has lived history which the reader has only read in the history books. She has stories to tell, tales to narrate, adventures to recount, but no one to tell them, until she meets someone.
After three hundred years of a lonely existence, she crosses paths with Henry in a small bookshop in Manhattan, the one who remembers her. “Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.”
Is this the start of unforgettable love, or unforgettable tragedy? To be sure, it is unforgettable. Can this really be a slip? The one who can say her real name, remember her stories. Or is it a devil lurking in the shadows, waiting for the opportune moment to strike?
Part romance, part adventure, part tragedy, the story of Addie LaRue has it all. But it is not a romance in the strictest sense of the genre. There is no girl-boy romance here to swoon over. Addie LaRue is in love with life, with living, and she chooses it over and over. Tired, at times, she wants to give up. But she holds on to the thread of life just to spite the devil.
An unabashed ode to life, the book is enthused with beautiful sentences, and the narrative moves effortlessly for 550 long pages. The story doesn’t falter, the plot doesn’t suffer, as Addie LaRue jumps centuries, cities, timelines.
Tricking the devil, she learns to read between the lines, to maneuver her curse, to leave her mark upon the world. Filled with art and life, the book leaves the reader aching for more. Written in beautiful prose, the Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is an unforgettable ode to the spirit of a girl who has an unashamed desire to experience the world in all its beauty and tragedy.
“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.”