The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V. E. Schwab’s novel about Addie LaRue reads like a modern fable on the cost of a granted wish: immortality bought at the price of slipping from every memory. The prose is lovely and the idea lingers after the last page. Some readers find that the telling keeps its characters at a distance and slows in places, and a steady undertow of sadness makes this a poor choice for anyone wanting comfort.

Worth knowing In 1714, in a village in France, Adeline LaRue prays to the old gods on the night before a marriage she does not want, and one of them answers after dark: she gets freedom and as long a life as she likes, and in exchange everyone she meets forgets her the moment she is out of sight. Three hundred years later, in New York in 2014, a bookseller named Henry remembers her. V. E. Schwab worked on the idea for a decade and published it in 2020; it sat on bestseller lists for most of that year. The chapters move between Addie’s centuries, Paris, Florence, the wars, and the present, and the dark god, who calls himself Luc, keeps returning to ask whether she has had enough.

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