What an unsettling novel. Adeline LaRue grows up in the quiet village of Villon, France. She’s adventurous and curious about the world beyond the village paths. Adeline gets a small taste of freedom the few times she is allowed to travel with her father to market in a larger town but that soon ends when her mother deems her too grown up.
Next thing Addie knows, she is being married off to old Roger and there’s nothing she can say about it. It’s 1714. Addie runs away and prays to one of the old gods to save her. Anything but marrying Roger and living and dying within the small village. But Adeline doesn’t realize she is praying, begging, after dark, and you should never pray to the gods that answer in the dark.
Addie makes a deal with the wrong god. She wishes for freedom, and get immortality. The Dark has saved her from marriage but the curse is that she’ll never be remembered. As soon as she leaves someone’s sight, they forget her.
Adeline lives this way for 300 years before it all changes.
The novel bounces around from 1714 to 2014 and many years in between. Addie sees Wagner operas performed in their time, she watches Beethoven meet his end, sees Sinatra on stage, witnesses the French Revolution, World Wars, the 60s. It’s a crazy novel. And enjoyable read, but unsettling they way she is never there, never remembered. There’s something about making deals with the dark that is deeply unsettling, and captured so well here.