Review
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V E Schwab
Do you ever feel invisible? Have you ever been forgotten by someone who you’ve definitely met before? Well this is life for Addie LaRue, granted immortality but in exchange must go through life never making a mark on the world: people forget her as soon as she’s out of sight, her writing disappears and any influence or memory she wants to leave behind is quickly erased. This is a sturdy, well-crafted contemporary novel standing firmly in the fantasy genre. The author, Victoria (V E) Schwab is an American fantasy author who grew up in Tennessee and graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from Washington University, St Louis in 2009. A prolific and frequent best-selling author she is, perhaps, best known for her 2013 novel “Vicious” and the “Shades of Magic” series. She now lives and works in Edinburgh and, in May 2018, delivered the Sixth Annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford. She came out as gay when aged 28. This novel was a decade in gestation and as of July 2021 has spent 37 consecutive weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. It covers 300 years from medieval France to modern day New York city. The character of the book’s title, Addie LaRue, makes a Faustian exchange with a powerful god in eighteenth-century France to escape a looming marriage, and spends the next 300 years moving through life forgotten. Her only companion is Luc, the god that cursed her and who offers to end the curse in exchange for her soul. She travels the world witnessing major historical events, then one day she finally hears the words “I remember you” spoken by Henry Strauss, a present day New Yorker. Henry, a bookshop worker in Manhattan, seems content with his life. Everyone is drawn to him and noticeably mesmerised. Henry’s story is one of inner turmoil, self-worth and the need for validation and love from those around you. The three central characters of the novel – Addie, Luc and Henry – become entangled in each other’s stories, each of them at odds with the world around them and at the same time desperately looking to be embraced by it.
38
www.melbourncambridge.co.uk
V E Schwab
Author V.E. Schwab has created an inclusive and magical tale of love and loss, where you’re rooting for Addie the entire way through. Her refusal to sell her soul and to keep trying to leave her mark on the world despite years of being forgotten is heroic. At least two of the characters are LGBTQIA+ and Schwab introduces this in a nuanced and unpremeditated way, making this a fantasy novel where LGBTQIA+ people are celebrated and embraced, but in a way which lets the characters be themselves and doesn’t overtly rely on their queerness to form the narrative. The non-linear narrative regularly transports us back in time to Addie’s past, but it never gets confusing. The story is also told from both Addie’s and Henry’s points of view which offers a story full of substantial characters and a real character-reader connection. The surreal and fantastical elements of the book fit seamlessly within the world of the narrative and entwine wonderfully within the intricate life of Schwab’s protagonist. Readers will come away with a message of hope and the importance of persevering even when we feel like we aren’t making a difference. Schwab has created an optimistic and powerful story of the importance of ideas, creativity and internal self-worth and discovery. April McIntyre
The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John Le Carre
If there is indeed a Heaven then we can be certain that David Cornwell (more famously known around the world as the writer John le Carre, who died in 2020 in his 89th year) is already ensconced in some quiet corner seated at a writing
