The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - October CC Book Club Selection

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Enjoying the discussion, and @Mary13 epiphanies about art, she is quite the art lover .

Interesting interview with author

You’re really passionate about deromanticizing the creative process and being open about the challenges of being a writer. How did that influence the way you wrote about art and artists in this book?

I grew up with art. My undergraduate degree is in art and my graduate degree is in art history, and I tried to fold in all of those pieces. Everyone in the book is an artist in some way and I tried to provide artists in all of their manifestations: Sam lives and breathes it and is extraordinarily confident, Beatrice is an art historian trying to find herself, Robbie is a performance artist, Henry is a lost artist. What it came down to was this is a book about vulnerability. Creative vulnerability is uncomfortable, but it’s something I believe is absolutely intrinsic to the creative process. If you don’t self examine and don’t understand your strengths and weaknesses, it’s hard to get to the root of that in other people.“

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You reference others who’ve made their own deals, prominent artists and historical figures. How did you choose which ones to feature?

The thing about the book is about half of the places you go are real, about half of the people you meet are real. I wanted to have an interplay between the people that I’m creating wholesale and the people that are actually real. I was creating a timeline, and I had to choose people that either lived right along that timeline [or who come later in the storytelling when Luc visits more often]. I remember, very early on in the process, feeling very beholden to history and thinking that everyone needed to be real and that I needed to Forrest Gump the situation. Then I realized when I made it about art that I could create the art and the artists from scratch and still give the feeling of historicity by having this interplay with real historical figures and grand historical events without being beholden to all of the humans of history.

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I had thought at first that perhaps Luc needed to consume souls to survive, but looking online (there’s a sub-Reddit for everything, including Faustian bargains), the correct answer per legend is that the devil devours souls to increase his power. The more he consumes, the greater his skills and the higher his position in the hierarchy of dark gods. Luc’s abilities suggest he is consuming a high number of souls.

A secondary reason for the devil to consume souls is that it is necessary in order for him to assume human form when needed. Luc spends a lot of time in human form from 1952-1968 (p. 398-399), so woe to any weak humans in his vicinity during that time.

Whenever Addie feels herself forgetting, she presses her ear to his bare chest and listens for the drum of life, the drawing of breath, and hears only the woods at night, the quiet hush of summer. A reminder that he is a lie, that his face and his flesh are simply a disguise (p. 399).

In a way, Luc and Addie meet in the middle. By the end, in order to maintain a long-term (aka eternal) relationship, she must become more like a god and he must become more like a human.

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue isn’t perfect. I had some minor quibbles with the novel, but I easily gave it four stars. However, I read a review by someone who loathed it. Among the reviewer’s complaints:

This is a book which encompasses a lot of time and space — not only does it span three hundred years, but it features a character who can take Addie anywhere in the world at will and yet it never escapes the gravity well of Western culture; it never shows interest in the art or experiences of people who aren’t white. It hardly even acknowledges their existence.

“Why does everything have to be about race?” you might ask. "That’s beyond the scope of the book.” But it’s not. Addie mostly takes place in France and America, mostly between the years 1714-2014: those are places and times which are loaded with racial history — to put the book in that geographical and chronological framework is to invite a discourse about race, a discourse with which both Addie the text and Addie the character refuse to engage. The relationship this book has with history is frighteningly cavalier.

It is explicitly stated in the text that there are other supernatural entities and other people who have made deals with them, which led me to wonder: Why should I care about Addie? What about the people who made deals to escape slavery? The people who made deals to escape concentration camps? Why aren’t we getting those stories? https://www.decorahlibrary.org/library-news/the-invisible-life-of-addie-larue-by-v-e-schwab

My answer would be “We aren’t getting those stories because that would be a different book.” This reviewer is asking for a novel with a completely different cast, theme, structure, and tone.

That said, do you think V.E. Schwab should have incorporated Black history and major incidents of racial or ethnic strife into the novel, even if just in a passing way? Or would that have been “checking off boxes” and outside the novel’s focus? The reviewer does have a point here:

Addie physically exists in the world and yet is forgotten, over and over, by the people around her — a ready-made metaphor for those who are homeless or living in poverty. But the book never explores this.

On the one hand, I think, yes, that would have been a very interesting idea to explore! But on the other hand, I think, how much is an author expected to cram into a single novel? Don’t even excellent, thought-provoking ideas have to sometimes end up on the cutting room floor?

Also, it’s worth noting that nowhere in her scathing review does the reviewer mention the ground-breaking aspect that nearly every significant character in Addie LaRue is either bisexual, pansexual or gay (Addie, Henry, Bea, Robbie, James, Sam, etc.). And it’s not even a dramatic plot point or presented as something out of the ordinary; it’s just a fact of life. As a different reviewer wrote, Schwab crafts stories with “queer normalcy,” which is in itself a feat and embraces another marginalized population.

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I agree that would have been an entirely different book. That reviewer wants a forced perspective that would redirect the major themes of the book. That perspective is showing up more and more in current literature so not sure why it has to be in every book. That reviewer also is not complaining about the lack of discussion of anti-Semitism, which inundated the times and locations covered by the book, likely considerably more than racism. Misogyny at least did seem to be integral to some of the story.

I’ve read reviews that complain about Addie living through historic times but only briefly touching on those events. I would have loved more details of her three years as a spy during WWII. But again, a different book and perhaps not unlike others we’ve read! The idea of being such a spy is not to be noticed and not to be remembered. So very appropriate for Addie.

Along with “queer normalcy,” the author also incorporates Jewish normalcy, if such a thing exists. I’m always happy to see Jewish life presented as normal as Christian life is, and to note that there are holidays far more important than Chanukah!

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I had similar thoughts initially as the reviewer while reading the book. A flexible story timeline does give you a lot of freedom to choose your locales. It niggled a bit that it was a predominantly western focused 300 years. Schwab does say that Addie has read the Quran and Upanishads but that was the extent of mentioning other religions and races.

Here’s how I look at it — writing a book that encompasses so many years involves a lot of historical research to keep your facts straight. A writer is going to want to stay within their comfort zone when intertwining fiction around past events. While I think it would’ve made a richer book to include Africa or Asia in some of those chapters, it didn’t diminish the book’s enjoyment for me.

As for acknowledging that there are many people in our current society who are forgotten by the mainstream society, or including other races and cultures, well… some books are written purely to entertain. A book that’s crammed with socially appropriate messages may not always succeed as a story and a story is after all what the writer is trying to tell. The expectation that a book needs to be more than an enjoyable story is unrealistic. It is always great if that happens harmoniously in a book but it isn’t a bad thing if it does not.

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I agree that books can’t be all things to all people. It was an interesting read. It made me consider how few options were generally available to young women (and sadly that is still the case in many places). It also brings home how desperate people can feel when they “aren’t enough” to loved ones.

I’m glad to have read it.

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Didn’t Addie have to learn English? Going to Asia or Africa would have meant that she would have to learn more languages. If that reviewer wants all of that, then write her own book. I really liked the book, and I think that I will want to reread it at some time. There really was a lot happening in the book. So much keeps going around in my head about the story.

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There is no way a single white woman with no wealth could have survived in Africa or Asia for most of the time covered. That’s just silly. I do understand that she couldn’t easily interact with history, but the result was a book that sometimes seemed a little bland. Even the artists inspired by her weren’t terribly memorable.

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Yes, the reviewer above wanted a different book. I kind of like the idea of exploring other topics and timelines through other individuals who sold their souls to Luc. That could be a very interesting Invisible Life book series. I would love to see how Luc interacts with other soul sellers.

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It would be an interesting series, but V.E. Schwab nixed the idea (from the link posted above by @jerseysouthmomchess):

This is your first standalone since your debut The Near Witch. Was it refreshing to be able to tell the entire story in one novel, or did you find it challenging after your recent experiences spreading plotting over multiple books?

Every format has its own challenges and its own strengths. But I think there’s an elegance to a standalone and an immense pride in being able to tell that kind of story. Some stories are designed to be capsules.

I felt very free because I knew that I didn’t have any length requirements. I also knew I didn’t want to drag it out. I had no interest in making it a series. Because I waited to be the right age to write this book, I didn’t want to be a different age when I came back to it. That’s a weird thing to think about but books become static entities and people are still growing. You inevitably track that change over the course of a series. I’m working on Threads of Power now, which is the continuation of the Shades of Magic series, and I’m five years older. I have to surrender to the fact that I’m still growing as a creator, whereas in a standalone you’re immortalizing one period.

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Sometimes, enough is enough. I think the author accomplished what she set out to do and kept the story pretty engaging. Obviously since movie rights were purchased, others thought so as well.

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My husband and I generally go to late evening mass on Sundays. Tonight during the Prayers of the Faithful, we prayed for members of our community — those who are ill, those who have recently passed, etc.— all by name. At the end, the priest said spontaneously from the altar, “Tonight, let us also pray for those whom no one remembers.”

Funny coincidence!

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One of my quibbles with the book was that I wished Addie and the other characters were fleshed out a little more. But then I realized the near-impossibility of that when almost every character can only interact with Addie on an extremely limited basis. Robbie, for example, is annoying in every interaction – but every interaction is (for him) the first with Addie and he’s jealous. Therefore, we never have the opportunity to see true change or layers in his personality.

The character who felt most real to me was Henry, because he remembers Addie and we get a genuine relationship there. V.E. Schwab said she infused herself into his character:

“I was very scared of writing Henry,” says Schwab, “because, if I had written him wrong, he could have come off as just whiny, millennial white boy who has everything and can’t seem to get his sh*t together. I was really afraid of him being the weakest link in the story.” Henry earns his role in the story, and the relative smallness of his life grounds a tale of gods and souls and immortality in something more recognizable, especially for millennials living with mental illness.

“Essentially, what I did, is I gave him me,” says Schwab of her tactic for keeping Henry from becoming an ineffective character. “Really in this triptych, of these three characters, he is the only human. I gave him every one of my fears and every one of my insecurities and every one of my suicidal thoughts. I made him exactly who I would be if I hadn’t found writing when I did." The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: A Tale of Immortality A Decade in the Making | Den of Geek

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I read the first Shades of Magic book and was extremely underwhelmed. It had some nice bits, but I didn’t think that the world building made any sense.

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Additional thoughts from reading posts elsewhere:

  • One reader said Addie’s “love” for Luc was actually Stockholm syndrome. Good point!

  • Another reader bemoaned the fact that Addie seemed to go through history sleeping with people – not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the reader would have preferred to swap out some of those bedroom scenes for Addie remembering a day as, let’s say, a suffragette. :blush:

I did have a similar thought when I was reading, i.e., that Addie seemed to mark history through the people with whom she’d slept, rather than the events she’d lived through or sights she’d seen. But I chalked that up to the basic human need of touch. Remember, Addie is new to every person every day, so a friendly hug or an affectionate touch from a friend / neighbor / family member can never happen for her. Her way to fill that need is to arrange a one night stand. Repeatedly. It’s the only affection she gets, which may be why she views her 300 years through that lens.

  • General consensus is that Addie is self-absorbed from the get-go, and 300 years of living makes her increasingly me-focused, rather than turning her into someone deeply sensitive to the human condition.

Addie does save Henry in the end, but she doesn’t really give up anything to do so. She resumes her immortal life, in Luc’s company, which might have its ups and downs, but does spare her from the day-to-day quest for survival, and means lots of gourmet meals and comfortable beds.

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V.E. Schwab says in the interview posted above:

Thematically, it makes sense that Addie makes her mark through art, and we see that impact through visual work (especially when she observes her influence at The Artifact). I like how it all falls together, and personality-wise Addie is what she is and it works.

BUT…here’s a “what if” question: If you were writing a different version of this novel, what is another way that Addie could have left her mark on history? What if, for example, Addie chose to use every day doing random acts of kindness? How might the world be different? What if she “haunted” the political realm? How could she have altered the course of history? What if she simply chose one family to interact with every single day through generations? Would that have a subliminal effect on their lives? Theoretically, she is not remembered, but Toby’s lyrics suggest that her presence lingers, as when we wake from a dream and struggle to recall who was in it.

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I read only half the book, but during that time I kept thinking of The movie “ Groundhog Day” - when Bill Murray repeats the same day,

After hedonistic period, eventually he becomes outwardly focused- learns new skills, teaches the piano, helps the community -

I kept waiting for Addie to evolve( thought of Maslow’s hierarchy) - too

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We crossposted at the same time, and you elegantly addressed my issue with the book. It had a great premise, which didn’t seem to go anywhere for half the book. Never got out of the shallow water-

I then googled the author realized she was just 36 years old, ten years younger when she started the novel

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My final thought is that I liked the “meta” ending – where it turns out that the book we are reading is the book written by Henry. It could have come off as too contrived, but I thought it worked nicely as a wrap-up for Henry’s story.

On that note, we can start choosing our December book at any time!

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