"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!'
"Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life?" - Nietzsche
There’s this moment in V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue that’s burned into my mind—Addie, standing in a world that refuses to remember her, her gaze heavy with the centuries she’s lived yet never truly existed. Similar to the days during Covid quarantine when daily choirs became an anchor point in our lives. It’s more than a tale about a deal with the devil; it’s an unraveling into what it means to live, to be seen, to leave a mark that endures. Schwab doesn’t just play with fantasy tropes here, she strips them down and uses them to ask the messiest questions about identity and the human need for connection.
It reminds me of Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, this idea that we live the same life over and over, caught in a loop of both the beautiful and the tragic. But for Addie, it’s not just about living the same moments repeatedly; it’s about the ache of erasure. Her curse forces her to stare into Nietzsche’s abyss, where everything meaningful slips away. Her existence becomes a mirror to that void, a life of infinite days that no one remembers.
What hits hardest is that the real battle in Addie’s life isn’t with the devil who tricked her or even the people who forget her, it’s with herself. It’s the breakdown of identity when there’s no one around to reflect you back to yourself. Schwab peels away the layers of Addie’s soul, asking how much of who we are is defined by the people we interact with, by the memories they hold of us, by the marks we leave on their lives. When all of that is taken away, what’s left? Who are we when there’s no proof that we ever existed?
Addie’s transformation from a rebellious young woman in 18th-century France to this ageless wanderer feels like a Kafkaesque journey (like Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead), lost in an unending maze of choices that all seem wrong. Every decision she makes pushes her further into this gray area where morality blurs and selfhood feels like a losing game. You can see her sense of self fracturing under the weight of her own invisibility, and it makes you wonder: how much of yourself would you give up just to keep existing, even if no one else ever knew?
And that’s what The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue does so well. It refuses to give us easy answers. Schwab doesn’t let us settle into the comfort of right or wrong, good or evil. Instead, she plunges us into Sartre-like existential uncertainty, where existence precedes essence, and Addie has to recreate herself from scratch every day. In a world that forgets her as soon as she leaves a room, she becomes her own myth, constantly redefining what it means to be alive.
What I love about this novel is how it plays with the concepts of memory and identity in a way that feels almost subversive. Addie’s world forces us to reconsider what it means to connect with others when the very fabric of identity is ripped away. She evolves not because time ages her, but because she’s always in flux, reinventing herself in a society that doesn’t offer her a solid place to stand. It’s a radical meditation on how we define ourselves when all the usual anchors—family, history, relationships—are gone.
And then there’s Henry, the one who remembers her. His fear of being insignificant, of living a life that goes unnoticed, stands in sharp contrast to Addie’s endless anonymity. They’re two sides of the same existential coin, one cursed to never be remembered, the other desperate to be known. Their relationship doesn’t just spark because he sees her; it’s because they’re both haunted by this terror of not mattering in a world that measures worth in permanence.
Luc, the devil in Addie’s bargain, serves as a twisted reflection of immortality and memory. He’s this eternal being who remembers everything, whose presence is always grounded in history, while Addie drifts through centuries with nothing to hold onto. Their dynamic isn’t just a classic battle of wills; it’s a philosophical debate on whether immortality without meaning is any better than mortality with memory. Luc’s stability against Addie’s constant flux forces us to confront what it really means to live a life stretched thin over centuries.
Schwab’s narrative leans heavily into existentialist thought, digging into themes of authenticity, freedom, and the absurdity of creating meaning in a world that offers none. Without the ability to leave a lasting mark or form stable connections, Addie has to find value in the moment itself. It’s this terrifying kind of freedom that demands she build her own meaning from scratch every single day. The novel makes us ask: without external validation or a lasting impact, what makes a life truly worth living?
Time in this story isn’t just a linear progression; it’s a fog that wraps itself around Addie’s existence, making years blur together while each day brings a fresh struggle to survive. It’s reminiscent of Heidegger’s concept of being-toward-death, where the awareness of our mortality shapes how we live. But for Addie, that awareness is twisted into something unrecognizable—her life stretches out into infinity, where time itself loses meaning, and every moment feels like a desperate act to hold onto something real.
What The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue captures so brilliantly is the tension between being and being known. It’s a study in what happens when every trace of your existence is erased, yet you keep fighting to make those fleeting moments count. Even though Addie can’t create anything that lasts, she becomes a muse—a whisper in the ear of artists, a shadow in the margins of their work. Her influence is invisible but undeniable, like ripples spreading out long after the stone has sunk.
Schwab’s prose is like a spell—it lingers in the mind, each word heavy with the weight of forgotten moments. She paints Addie’s centuries of life with such detail that you feel every brushstroke, every memory slipping through her fingers. It’s this slow accumulation of small, vivid experiences that shows how a life can still be rich and full, even if it’s destined to disappear without a trace.
The novel’s exploration of love is just as layered. For Addie, love has to be reinvented every day, stripped of the comfort that comes with shared history. It asks whether love can truly exist in the present moment, untethered from the past or future. Schwab pushes us to rethink what connection means when you can’t rely on familiarity, when each encounter is a chance to build something entirely new, even if it’s gone by morning.
As I closed the final pages of Addie’s story, I found myself wrestling with my own questions. What would be left of me if all the markers of my identity disappeared? How much of my sense of self relies on being seen, remembered, reflected back by others? If I knew I would be forgotten, would I love differently, live differently? The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue doesn’t answer these questions—it just holds up a mirror and makes us stare at the reflection we might not want to see.
Ultimately, this novel isn’t just about a girl who made a deal with the devil; it’s a philosophical inquiry into what it means to exist when everything that defines you is stripped away. It’s about legacy, memory, and the small acts of resistance we engage in just to prove we were here. Addie’s life, filled with centuries of anonymity, forces us to confront our own fears of being forgotten and our desperate desire to leave a mark, however small, on the world.
As I let Addie’s story settle in, I found a deep appreciation for the tiny moments of connection we create every day, the ways we leave pieces of ourselves in the lives we touch. In a world that often feels too fast, too transient, Addie’s journey is a reminder to inhabit each moment fully, to let the simple act of remembering become an act of defiance against the inevitability of forgetting.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is more than a novel; it’s an insight to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of reinvention. It’s a story about the “invisible” threads that bind us, the marks we leave even when no one sees them, and the beauty of living a life that refuses to be defined by its limitations.