The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V. E. Schwab)

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
V. E. Schwab
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Since her earliest memories, Adeline LaRue had looked toward the edge of town and wondered what lay beyond. Her first trip to the walled city of Le Mans with her woodcarver father only whets her appetite for new sights and sounds and wonders... but a French country girl in the 1700's can't expect that kind of life, only a husband and children and a small plot in the village cemetery when she's worn down to nothing. Neither the old gods, to whom local eccentric Estele still prays, or the new God in His stone church can help her - until, fleeing a wedding she does not want, Addie encounters a figure of darkness and deceit who offers her the freedom she wants, at a price she does not understand until it is too late.
For three hundred years, Addie has wandered the world as a living ghost. Her bargain grants her eternal life and youth and a crystal-sharp memory to retain it all, yet erases every memory of her in the world, every mark she tries to make. The closing of a door or the passage of sleep wipes her from minds as if she'd never been. She cannot even say her name or tell her story without her tongue betraying her. And all the while, the dark god whom she calls Luc teases her, taunts her, threatens her to surrender her soul to him at last. So she clings to what beauties and wonders she can, finding small cracks in the walls of her curse. Then, in a dusty used book shop in New York City in 2014, she meets Henry - the first person who actually remembers her from one day to the next. Perhaps she has finally found a way out of her ill-advised bargain... or perhaps Henry's curse, like Luc's deviousness, is greater than she imagined...

REVIEW: I went into this with high hopes and good recommendations. Early on, those were well met. Addie is a determined, if impulsive, young woman, born in the wrong time (or at least the wrong social class) to follow the path she craves, willing to take any chance to escape a life that will crush her to nothing... even though she was well warned not to pray to the gods that answer after dark. Luc is an inhuman creature, somewhere between a god and a devil, who finds himself oddly fascinated by his latest catch. Henry is a man who was cursed, in some way, from birth, a boy who feels so much he can barely function without being overwhelmed. As Addie and Henry develop a relationship that seems to defy both of their curses, flashbacks reveal her duels with Luc... duels that, naturally, she tends to lose, save her stubborn determination not to surrender when he calls. Early on, it's an interesting examination of two wounded souls (three, perhaps, if you count Luc; his obsession with Addie is a weakness he does not want to admit), delving into the world of art and how ideas can thrive in various media even when memory is unreliable, set against the backdrop of history.
At some point, though, it settles into a circular pattern of brooding, hurt, and angsty people being broody and hurt and angsty, going through the same motions of the same hurts again and again and again in their lives, punctuated by the odd trip to an underground music club or experimental art exhibit or obscure theatrical performance. Around and around and around again, then back around, and for all that it was decently written, it wasn't progressing the plot, or even deepening the characters, because it was showing me things I already knew, if in a very slightly altered setting, at each pass. Even the best music grows monotonous when it refuses to end. By the time it finally came to the climax, I was more exhausted than truly invested, and the wrap-up... without spoilers, I can't go into specifics, but it felt like it cheapened one character and my investment in them. Possibly that was a result of how I'd grown weary of the seemingly-endless circling and prodding of the same wounds. Or possibly The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue just plain wears out its welcome well before it ends. Overall, it's a decent book, but I found myself thinking I'd have enjoyed it more had there been a little less of it.

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