The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Estele used to call these the restless days, when the warmer-blooded gods began to stir, and the cold ones began to settle. When dreamers were most prone to bad ideas, and wanderers were likely to get lost. Addie has always been predisposed to both.” 

Addie’s characterization as a dreamer and a wanderer casts her as having the temperament of an artist. Much of the book exists as an examination of this temperament and its consequences, as Addie flirts with darkness and oblivion, only to find herself thrust into both after making her deal with Luc. Though in some ways a cautionary tale about indulging creative impulses, the novel also depicts Addie enjoying moments of triumph and transcendence, suggesting that the hardship of a dreamer’s life is worth it.

“It is the only thing Addie refused to leave behind and feed to the flames in New Orleans, though the smell of him clung to it like smoke, his stain forever on everything. She does not care. She loves the jacket. It was new then, but it is broken in now, shows its wear in all the ways she can’t. It reminds her of Dorian Gray, time reflected in cowhide instead of human skin.” 

Given that Addie cannot show her age, she imbues her old, beat-up jacket with symbolic resonance to assert her long existence. At once an affectation casting her as an “old soul” and a talisman against the forces of darkness, the jacket is a reminder that time is real for Addie, even if her body does not show it. Meanwhile, Dorian Gray is a reference to Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which shares many elements with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, including a shadowy figure who grants a protagonist everlasting youth.

“Estele, who believes that the new God is a filigreed thing. She thinks that He belongs to cities and kings, and that He sits over Paris on a golden pillow, and has no time for peasants, no place among the wood and stone and river water.” 

Estele—and by extension Addie—views the Christian God as an enforcement mechanism for the status quo. Worship of Him is framed as a way to keep peasants like Addie from seeking anything more than a short, small life of marriage and motherhood. This diminished emphasis on Christianity is consistent with the Enlightenment principles overtaking the French intellectual class throughout the 18th century. While Enlightenment thinkers subjugated theology to secular ideas like reason and humanism, however, Addie retreats from Christianity toward a different but equally spiritual worldview, one of trickster gods and mythical fae.

“No, Adeline has decided she would rather be a tree, like Estele. If she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.” 

This quote speaks to Addie’s motivations on the eve of her decision to make a pact with Luc. It is not so much that Addie fears laying down roots—although this is certainly how Luc interprets her desire for freedom. Rather, Addie exists in a deeply patriarchal community in which the only role she is allowed to play is that of the dutiful wife and mother. To reject this role, as Addie does, is to find herself a pariah in her village.

“Amid the growing list of negatives—she cannot write, cannot say her name, cannot leave a mark—this is the first thing she has been able to do. She can steal.” 

As Addie navigates the boundaries of her curse, she learns that theft is one of the only things she can do that has lasting consequences. This makes sense given that the most successful theft is one that the victim does not realize occurred. Addie therefore steals not only out of necessity but also because her stolen property is evidence that she still exists. It will be decades before Addie learns to leave her mark in ways that are creative rather than destructive.

“A secret kept. A record made. The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.” 

The notion that ideas are more powerful than memories is one of the book’s overarching themes. Addie comes to realize that memories often distort the truth or fade away entirely. On the other hand, ideas are far sturdier, enduring in the brain for as long as a lifetime and enduring through works of art that last for centuries. This revelation helps Addie make peace with the fact that she does not exist in anyone’s memories. 

“Palimpsest. She doesn’t know the word just yet, but fifty years from now, in a Paris salon, she will hear it for the first time, the idea of the past blotted out, written over by the present, and think of this moment in Le Mans.” 

One of the book’s dominant symbols, a palimpsest is a manuscript page from which the original text has been erased and replaced by new text. The word is derived from an Ancient Greek term that means “scraped clean and ready to be used again.” This is an apt characterization of Addie’s post-curse existence, in which her past is virtually erased from the record of the world, leaving only the faintest of residues expressed through the art she inspires.

“For the truth of her hunger, which she is only just discovering. For the ache in her feet, though they do not cut or bruise. For the pain of the wound in her shoulder, before it healed. The darkness has granted her freedom from death, perhaps, but not from this. Not from suffering.” 

One of the cruelest things about Luc’s curse is that while Addie is immortal, she is not invulnerable. This is a calculation on the part of Luc, who believes that by making Addie’s life as miserable as possible, she will more readily surrender her soul to end to her suffering. What Luc does not expect is that, for Addie, the suffering is a flame from which she emerges stronger, forging herself into a formidable adversary for Luc.

“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?” 

Although Addie speaks here of her unique supernatural condition, the sentiment she expresses is common to the human experience. Especially for young creative types, the impulse to leave one’s mark on the world is so strong that to fail to do so can cause one to call into question their very existence. This impulse may be even stronger—and potentially even more destructive—in the social media age, when one’s “mark” is measured by retweets and Facebook likes. 

“He has given her a gift tonight, though she doubts he knows it. Time has no face, no form, nothing to fight against. But in his mocking smile, his toying words, the darkness has given her the one thing she truly needs: an enemy.” 

This scene constitutes a major turning point for Addie. Prior to now, Addie’s life has been a pointless struggle against hunger, the elements, and time. Luc’s taunts, however, rather than discourage her, embolden her by recasting her existence in an adversarial framework. While this reaction gives her the strength to endure, however, it is questionable whether it is healthy or productive for Addie to define her life through her adversary. This question is further expounded upon at the end of the book, when Addie turns her energies completely to the task of defeating Luc.

“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.” 

Alongside the novel’s gothic, supernatural storytelling, there is a commentary on the very real injustices that women face, especially in the 18th century. Had Addie been a man, her curse would have been far easier to navigate; after all, men are not asked questions and are frequently granted the benefit of the doubt. In turn, if Addie rejected the curse, her life would be equally empty, as Addie would be left incapable of leaving a mark that resonated beyond her small family.

“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.” 

Building on the feminist themes of the previous quote, the author here draws a distinction between the options available to Remy and those available to Addie. Both individuals grew up in small, peasant villages and hungered for something more, but while Remy, as a man, was permitted to obtain formal schooling, Addie was actively discouraged from any non-domestic pursuits. While Remy did not have to deal with the shackles of expectation placed on him by his community, Addie was forced into a marriage that would have destroyed any opportunity to escape her home village. Even though Remy and Addie were born into similar geographic and socioeconomic circumstances, it is Addie who must make a deal with the devil if she wants to escape.

“These are the words of a man—Voltaire. But they are also the hands that set the type. The ink that made it readable, the tree that made the paper. All of them matter, though credit goes only to the name on the cover.” 

This is one of the earliest moments when Addie realizes there are more ways than one to leave her mark. In fact, most individuals make contributions to the world anonymously, receiving little to no credit for their work. That does not mean, however, that their work lacks value. Thus, this is a major turning point at which Addie realizes that her life can have value even if nobody remembers it. 

“It’s a long-running sore point between them, the fact that Henry isn’t gay, that he’s attracted to a person first and their gender second.” 

Both Henry and Addie are bisexual, and the novel deals with their sexual orientations in a casual way. In fact, this may be the only moment in the book in which either character’s orientation causes even a modicum of tension. For Henry and Addie, loving both men and women is the most natural thing in the world.

“I’m a person, not a pet, Henry, and I don’t need you looking down at me, or coddling me either. I do what I have to, and it’s not always nice, and it’s not always fair, but it’s how I survive. I’m sorry you disapprove. But this is who I am. This is what works for me.”

In their first fight, Henry criticizes Addie for her casual attitude toward petty theft. What Henry fails to recognize is that Addie never had the privilege of following a strict code of morality—she wouldn’t have lasted a day on the streets of 18th-century Paris without resorting to thievery. At the same time, Addie’s defensiveness reflects the posture she’s been forced to adopt to survive her curse. With Henry, she can finally let her guard down, even if she does not realize it yet.

“Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.” 

Once again, the author revisits the divide between memories and ideas. Memories purport to be strict interpretations of fact, even as they distort the truth as often as they reflect it. Ideas, on the other hand, are flexible enough to encompass the messiness of emotional truths. Through this realization, Addie copes with the fact that her existence endures through art rather than memory.

“‘I would have lost my mind.’

‘Oh, I did,’ she says blithely. ‘But when you live long enough, even madness ends.’” 

This quote is one of many reflecting the profound suffering Addie experiences over the course of 300 years. It also speaks to her resilience and the resilience of human beings more generally. On a long enough timeline, humans are capable of developing extraordinarily novel ways to cope with suffering, as Addie has. 

“And it should feel good to hear her music, it should feel right. After all, she has gone to visit pieces of her art so many times. But they were only pieces, stripped of context. Sculptured birds on marble plinths, and paintings behind ropes. Didactic boxes taped to whitewashed walls and glass boxes that keep the present from the past. It is a different thing when the glass breaks. It is her mother in the doorway, withered to bone. It is Remy in the Paris salon. It is Sam, inviting her to stay, every time. It is Toby Marsh, playing their song. The only way Addie knows how to keep going is to keep going forward. They are Orpheus, she is Eurydice, and every time they turn back, she is ruined.” 

Here, Addie likens her circumstances to those of Eurydice and Orpheus. In Greek and Roman mythology, Orpheus is given the opportunity to lead his wife Eurydice out of the underworld, as long as he resists the urge to look behind him to make sure she is still there. This story resonates with Addie, whose lifelong attempts to reenter the world of the living are stymied whenever her lovers turn their backs and then look back at her. In some ways, Addie’s ordeal is even worse than Eurydice’s, in that Addie is forced to relive this pattern again and again.

“Humans are capable of such wondrous things. Of cruelty, and war, but also art and invention. She will think this again and again over the years, when bombs are dropped, and buildings felled, when terror consumes whole countries. But also when the first images are impressed on film, when planes rise into the air, when movies go from black-and-white to color.” 

Only rarely does Addie look back on her life in a historical context. Most of the time, she views wars and revolutions as personal anecdotes that are disconnected from a broader macro-narrative of the world. Here, however, she takes stock of the three centuries of human history she has witnessed and concludes that humanity, for all its capacity for evil and destruction, is a race defined by creation and invention.

“[T]he beautiful tree, with its wide limbs and its deep roots, is gone. Nothing but a jagged stump remains. Addie lets out an audible gasp, sinking to her knees, runs her hands over the dead and splintered wood. No. No, not this. She has lost so much, and mourned it all before, but for the first time in years, she is struck with a loss so sharp it steals her breath, her strength, her will. Grief, deep as a well, opens inside her. What is the point in planting seeds? Why tend them? Why help them grow? Everything crumbles in the end. Everything dies.” 

It is telling that for all the friends, family, and lovers Addie loses, it is the loss of the tree she planted over Estele’s grave that most devastates her. For one, trees have always been powerful symbols for Addie. Although they are rooted to the ground, trees are also allowed to grow and follow their wild whims. This is the middle ground Addie desires, existing somewhere between the parochial domesticity of life in Villon and the transient wandering of her post-curse life. In a more specific sense, the tree Addie planted above Estele’s grave is one of the most profound and meaningful marks she’s been able to leave since her transformation. Thus, its loss is a heavy to blow to Addie.

“His green eyes gleam, not with mischief, or triumph, but power. The shade of someone who knows they’re in control.” 

At the start of the book, Luc conforms closely to the devilish character trope found across European literature and rooted in the German legend of Faust. He is initially motivated by a strictly supernatural desire to corrupt humans and collect souls. As the narrative progresses, however, Luc increasingly reflects human motivations and characteristics, particularly those of a toxic, abusive partner. His hunger for Addie’s soul stems not from some supernatural anger but rather from an all-too-human desire to impose his will on a person under the guise of love and affection.

“And this, she thinks, is home. This, perhaps, is love. And that is the worst part. She has finally forgotten something. Only it is the wrong thing. It is the one thing she was supposed to remember. That the man in the bed is not a man. That the life is not a life. That there are games, and battles, but in the end, it is all a kind of war.”

During her three-decade romantic coupling with Luc, Addie forgets the adversarial nature of their relationship. Luc, however, has not forgotten, and in fact his “love” for Addie is part of the same power play he’s engaged in for centuries. The fact that Addie almost came to believe his love was real is a reflection of how small Luc makes her world, to the point where he is her only source of affection.

“That is the thing about living in the present, and only the present, it is a run-on sentence. And Henry was a perfect pause in the story. A chance to catch her breath. She does not know if it was love, or simply a reprieve. If contentment can compete with passion, if warmth will ever be as strong as heat. But it was a gift. Not a game, or a war, not a battle of wills. Just a gift.” 

Addie looks back on her time with Henry with maturity but also a sense of remove. With him, she achieved the domestic contentment that would have been impossible for her to reach as a young woman in 18th-century rural France, and yet the circumstances of their coupling were so abnormal that she can only view it as an anomaly—one she is unlikely to find again in her long life. Nevertheless, the experience is restorative for Addie, steeling her resolve as she continues her long war against Luc.