The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

I hate this book.

The best thing about this book is the story, the idea, the concept. I love the artworks and how Victoria has woven in those into Addie's life - but... they aren't real. The artworks don't exist, the artists don't exist, it's all Victoria's imagination. I'm so disappointed. It would have been so good.

This story starts in 18th century France, and the main character is pretty typical 23 years old American girl. No, no, she's supposed to be a French peasant girl in the 18th century, but I don't think Victoria has read many books written in the 18th century, at least not with the mindset of that people actually are formed by their environment, language, time, people around them. Addie LaRue is a thoroughly modern American woman.
And she's whiny. And selfish. So very, very selfish. And she thinks she is very clever. Oh my.

So, she makes a deal with the devil, because she doesn't want to play her part in life. She doesn't do her chores, she doesn't help her parents, she doesn't help anyone, just wanders around, dreams and scribbles into her books. There is no reason given to why she's like this, except that “she's not like other girls”, and she wants to experience the world, she wants to see what's on the other side of the mountains, she wants to eat all the delicious food out there.
What? Nothing in the book implies in any way that she even cares about food. There was one day in her life where she ate a big cup of coffee, a blueberry muffin, and a box of popcorn. Oh, and a glass of champagne.

She has a typical Catholic 18th century French upbringing - or that's what we are told - except that she doesn't have the slightest idea of what that is, because in reality she's a 21st century USonian girl. All her references to God and Christianity and faith and churches and Catholicism is... er... pictures? Maybe Victoria has seen some movies or so? So, she's your typical secular girl, who plays being a heathen, because there is this old witchy woman living in the village.
Who doesn't ask her to apprentice for her. Because that would have solved all the problems. Or not, because Addie wants to be “free”.
Reminds me of a sweet little thingy I read some 30 years ago. Can't remember it exactly right now, of course, but it went a little like this “the one is free who has taught himself to have discipline and fulfill their role in the community”. It was said by some Native American once upon a time.

Anyway, Addie gets her way, and then whines the rest of the book because somehow it's the devil's fault that she gets exactly what she wants. The idea of that we aren't free if we want to have relationships with people, if we want to be remembered, if we want to be members of a community, we have duties, obligations, chores, a role to play, we are part of a deal - and people grow into understanding this role and obligation. Adeline never did. She didn't understand this during the 300 years she lives, she just whined about not being able to have it all for nothing. She should be just allowed to do what ever she wanted, which was wander around and faun over imaginary things. The idea of that her parents were worried about how she would be able to support herself, where she would be getting her food and clothes, doesn't exist in the book. In 18th century, people didn't live long. And Adeline apparently doesn't do anything to earn her bread.

So she becomes a whore, a thief, a conwoman, and a tramp. She is immortal, invulnerable, forever young and healthy. She can live without eating, all her wounds heal immediately. She just feels the pain, but it doesn't effect her in any way. In stead of wandering out and seeing the world and experiencing all this stuff, she walks to Paris and lives there until the devil whisks her away from the French revolution and drops her in Italy. Nothing happens in Italy. Oh, except that one artist sketches her and she realizes that even though she can't make any marks on paper, others can, and they can paint her and write her and be inspired by her, so she becomes a muse, and keeps sleeping with artists all around the world. She isn't picky, she sleeps with men and women, musicians, painters, sculptures, writers. All just to leave some sort of mark in the world. But it's not enough.

“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?”

Most people don't leave a mark. Or leave marks that are like writing in the sand. Time passes over it and it's gone. Addie doesn't understand this, because she only thinks about herself. Even after 300 years, she doesn't feel she exists, because she still defines herself through others.
...
...
...

I remember all the books with heroines with passion for life, I remember my own life, I remember Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh, and sisters Brontë, and I hate Adeline.
“She is running out of subjects, has memorized the tired lines of the village, and all the familiar faces in it.”
Uh.

Victoria keeps namedropping - Addie's been in Marseilles, Budapest, Dublin, Iceland, Germany, Italy, everywhere, but - what she did there, what happened, why she went there - no-one knows, no-one cares. Most everything happens in New York and Paris, and everything that happens anywhere else could just as well have happened in New York and Paris. Ok, let's be honest, New York. Her Paris adventures didn't have any flavor of Paris. What made it Paris was namedropping. Some celebrities, some addresses. There seriously is nothing else that separates one place from another.
And Addie is the exact same person through the whole story. She lies just as lasciviously in an artist's bed whether it's 1820, 1970 or 2014. She thinks the same thoughts, and it's always whiny.
I mean... she does nothing but whines, and then Victoria writes this scene in the end of the book:

“If you could do it again,” he says, “would you still make the deal?”
And Addie says yes.
It has been a hard and lonely life, she says, and a wonderful one, too. She has lived through wars, and fought in them, witnessed revolution and rebirth. She has left her mark on a thousand works of art, like a thumbprint in the bottom of a drying bowl. She has seen marvels, and gone mad, has danced in snowbanks and frozen to death along the Seine. She fell in love with the darkness many times, fell in love with a human once.
And she is tired. Unspeakably tired.
But there is no question she has lived.
“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”
And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it.
Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow?
Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain?
And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, “Always.”

Yeah, sure. You have just written 400 pages about how unhappy she is, how she regrets, how she hates Luc, how she thinks he took everything from her, how she lives on just on spite, and now I'm supposed to believe she says this?

Then the ending... oh my f-ing God! I didn't think anything could make this book worse, that anything could make Addie a worse character, but boy was I wrong!
You see, Henry made a deal with the devil that he will be loved by everyone, but only live for a year. He was totally fine with this, because his life was too much and he couldn't take it any longer. He tried to kill himself. But as the quantity of life is always more important than the quality of life, Addie sacrifices herself to "save" Henry's life. She does it without asking Henry's opinion, and she doesn't tell Henry until the last minute, so he doesn't have any time to prepare for the shock. You see, Henry had never been happy before he met Addie. Addie was the only person in his life who really saw him and who appreciated him for who he was. He loved her. He was ok with dying. He was OK with ending his life then and there. As long as Addie was with him. Victoria made a point of saying it was OK because Addie was there, and he wasn't alone. So - picture this. The boy made a deal with the devil, and as all deals with the devil, it goes sour. He realized that nothing could make his life worth living. He had thought it would be good if he was loved, important, enough, but it wasn't. Not until Addie. So he was OK with ending it all. He was content. And then, the love of his life, this woman who is the only reason for him to live on, tells him that, "no, buddy, you will continue living, but without me, because I am going to live with the devil, whom I hate, because I love you. OK, bye!" And then she disappears. She vanishes right into the thin air. Had I been Henry, I would have killed myself right there and then.I HATE BITCHES SACRIFICING THEMSELVES WHEN IT'S NOT NEEDED NOR WANTED.Selfish, selfish, selfish! (This is BTW one reason to why I will NEVER be Christian. Jesus' sacrifice is not asked for, needed, nor wanted. My sins are not so grave that I wouldn't be 100% prepared to take what ever punishment the Good God deems appropriate. My God is good and just and knows me better than I do myself, and knows exactly why I did what I did, and I trust God with my full existence and if I'm wrong, and my sins are grave, and God deems me worthy hell, I accept God's decision with no resentment, anger or fear, and will take the consequences of my choices and burn with nothing but love and praise and gratitude to God forever and ever.)BTW, Addie. He will never get bored with you. He's the devil. The joke's on you. I wonder how many years it will take for you to get it.