By Abby Gross

When I was applying to college, I struggled to write my common application essay. It took multiple meetings with my English teacher, tearful conversations with my mom, and many stubborn hours sitting at my computer before I finally settled on what I wanted to write about. I wrote about the different career paths I considered growing up and how I finally decided I wanted to be a teacher. I knew I wanted to impact the lives of the kids I taught, to be remembered by them as they grew up. I wanted to leave a legacy with my kids. When I was writing my essay, the idea of legacy stuck in my head. What is legacy? Why does it matter? This question is one I thought about constantly when reading The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Shwab. 

This story follows Addie LaRue, a young French lady from 1714, who through a desperate attempt to escape her arranged marriage, makes a Faustian bargain with a mysterious “Old God.” This force, who calls himself Luc, gives her freedom and immortality but in return, everyone she encounters forgets her once their interaction is over. Addie lives three centuries before meeting someone who remembers her. 

The character’s relationships, and more particular the life that Addie lives, is revealed through a nonlinear timeline. This timeline goes back and forth between the beginning phases of Addie’s immortality, and the modern day struggles that Addie goes through, the least of which being meeting and developing a relationship with Henry–the only person to ever remember her. Even with jumping between time and place, the story itself was never confusing and instead added a really interesting plot element to the novel. 

Continuing on this note, let’s talk about narration. The narration in this story is really interesting in a few different ways. The story is narrated in the third person, although it is focalized through either Addie or Henry’s point of view depending on the chapter. Through this, readers are aware of their private thoughts and feelings. What’s really interesting about the way this story was written is that the distance between the narrator and Addie herself fluctuates often. To explain more, there are times where we are clearly reading commentary on the world Addie is in, but this commentary is coming from a distinct and more distant narrator, rather than coming from Addie’s own self. Or rather, the narrator is telling us about Addie, and then further in the paragraph we see the distance shrink and we are back to being closer to Addie’s own thoughts. For example, after several years of immortality: 

Yes, she is tired. She may not feel the years weakening her bones, her body going brittle with age, but the weariness is a physical thing, like rot, inside her soul. There are days when she mourns the prospect of another year, another decade, another century. There are nights when she cannot sleep, moments when she lies awake and dreams of dying. But then she wakes, and sees the pink and orange dawn against the clouds, or hears the lament of a lone fiddle, the music and the melody, and remembers there is such beauty in the world. And she does not want to miss it – any of it. (342) 

In this paragraph, we observe the distance between Addie and the narrator up until the very end.

The narration of this story is very much tied into the themes of the story. A huge theme in this story is the power struggle between men and women, especially in regards to female invisibility and how bodily autonomy is different for men and women. When discussing the relationship between men and women in a patriarchal society, one has to question why narrate the story this way? The choice of having a narrator provide commentary on the status of the world, rather than just having the character experience the world and allow the readers to draw their own conclusions, is an interesting one. To give some further context into this choice, let’s talk a bit about Addie’s backstory. While growing up, unlike every other woman in her small village, Addie never imagined herself marrying and starting a family. Instead, Addie occupied her time drawing sketches and dreaming of travels she hoped to go on, all the while traveling to the nearby city of Le Mans with her father on his work trips. Seeing this city gave not just inspiration, but also hope that one day she herself would be able to see other sights of the world. By the time Addie turns 23, she has decided to follow the example Estele, an elderly neighbor who taught her to worship ancient primitive deities, has set for her–a life free of marriage and baby-making. But this is denied to her by the village people as they demand for her to marry a recent widower. To Addie, this only confirms what she already knew, “Roger was looking for another wife, a mother for his children, a second life at the cost of Adaline’s one and only… [Estele] knew this was the risk of being a woman, of giving yourself to a place, instead of a person.”

As we saw previously, Addie had always rejected the traditional womanly roles expected of her, but this theme and the interesting narrative of this theme is shown more and more through the book in several different circumstances. In the 18th century, Addie discovers the freedom of dressing as a man in order to pass freely in the streets of Paris: “Freedom is a pair of trousers and a buttoned coat. A man’s tunic and a tricorn hat. If only she had known. The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam” (163).

In this paragraph, the narrator is clearly stating how men have distinct advantages in the world. To answer my question from earlier, I believe the choice to write this way ties into a reader’s own norms, or ideals. As detailed above, a large part of the story focuses on the struggles women have in a world that is tailored for men. I think it’s very likely that a man could read this story and disregard a lot of character and scene developments just because they don’t necessarily resonate with the things Addie goes through and has to do to survive. I believe that is why the narrator comments on these things in such a clear way that the audience is forced to believe that the world is like this, and there is no other way to interpret the things Addie goes through in a different way. “She watches these men and wonders anew at how open the world is to them, how easy the thresholds… ‘I was thinking that it must be so easy to be a man’” (pg 165).

Another recurring theme throughout the story is the idea of legacy. More specifically, as time goes by, we see Addie desperately wanting to leave a mark on the world once she discovers more limitations of her curse. We learn, along with Addie, that she cannot make a mark physically on the world, whether writing, breaking things, or something as simple as leaving footprints in the snow. However, Addie learns that she can make her mark in a different way. Each section of the book begins with a description of an art piece that has been created because of Addie’s existence through the centuries. A painting by Sam–a former lover of Addie’s–a pencil sketch by Matteo Renatti, a song by Toby–another former lover–and Revenir, in the Musee D’Orsay. Addie knows within herself, “She has not left a mark. And yet, she has. She has impressed herself upon Matteo, and he has impressed her upon the page” (326). This was such an interesting element to add to the book, and this just furthered my experience and immersion into Addie’s story.

This story has a certain amount of relatableness that I believe is very appealing, and also very eye opening, to different audiences. This story is one to make you think about how short life can truly be and how you spend that time. It can seem like life is so short, so wasted, so trying. That’s why Addie wanted immortality in the first place, right? This book serves to remind me of the largeness of the universe we are in and although it makes me feel small, it also reminds me that for billions of years, no one has ever been me or you and for the rest of eternity no one ever will be. We all are our own unique selves and nobody will ever have the exact same experience as you. We have the ability to experience, to live, to love. We all have our own power to create the future we want and make every moment the best we possibly can. I do not want to miss it–any of it.