Someone who remembers my name
France. The year 1714. Young Adeline wants to avoid marriage with a man from her village, Roger, and being a stepmother to his three children. To avoid a change in marital status, she makes a pact with Lucifer, whose name is – horror! – Luc. Coincidence? The title character does not believe it either! This Faustian pact influenced her entire life – past, present and future. Despite the significant limitations that she learns about during her earthly journey, she makes countless contacts with random people, enters into relationships with them, gets involved, and they… they just forget her. Not having a chance to be remembered becomes old Adeline’s curse. Shedding your old name and adopting its updated and undoubtedly abbreviated form – Addie – is the first step to change. However, how much will the protagonist have to sacrifice to find her way? Who will he meet in the bookstore three hundred years after leaving his home village? And why will He remember her even though no one else has the possibility? I guarantee that searching for answers on six hundred pages of the novel is the greatest pleasure!
Silence does not soothe
Addie’s been given a warning – never pray to the gods who answer after dark. Tempted by the prospect of independence and unfettered freedom, the dreamer-idealist girl decided to devote her life to the sake of something new, seemingly dreamlike. But still mysterious. As it turns out, Addie had a completely different picture of change. Together with the protagonist, we walk the streets of London endlessly limited by time, in silence. It is not the action that is most important here, but the creation of the reality surrounding the protagonist and her emotions – longing, anguish, sadness, doubt. There are many romantic threads, but their presence fits in with the extraordinary atmosphere of the story: the reader is not sure if these accounts make sense in the context of the entire story. The originality of the thread is another element that which allow for unlimited delight over the book. ReadingThe invisible life of Addie LaRue , we get to know the protagonist and her personality, but – interestingly – we get used to the supporting characters just as quickly. We follow their fate, we empathize and wait for them to come back to us in the following chapters. Schwab creates reality in a very original way, and her idea of ending Addie’s story cannot be forgotten. The book is characterized by easy language, interspersed with poetic inclusions. The method of providing information is therefore not complicated. The invisible life of Addie LaRue can also be read in the original.
Another perspective
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a unique proposition for readers of all ages. It must be admitted that Schwab created a universal novel – for older youth and adults, although it was hardly assigned to a specific reading group. Perhaps not everyone will like the blue pages of the book (they will certainly catch your eye in bookstores!), Which may bring to mind school stationery, but for me it is one of the many good ideas of the Poznań publishing house We need YA. I think that Addie’s creation should appeal to most readers, but the idea for other characters – incl. Luc, Henry – can arouse various, extreme emotions: on the one hand, they are catalysts of the action, on the other – we would like to know more and more about them. The author repeatedly reminds the reader how many freckles the title Addie has, also tells about her numerous, not necessarily pleasant, excesses in bed. Recipients, tempted by a catchy publishing description, expecting a literary proposal with unquestionable elegance in terms of content, may feel that a multi-threaded book is in fact a cheap romance novel.The invisible life of Addie LaRue should, however, be seen as a carrier of peculiar content, certainly not for everyone, but deserving to be called a contemporary literary phenomenon for the chosen ones. Tempted?
