The Invisible Life of Addie Larue

by V.E. Schwab

In 1714, in despair at being made to marry and spend the rest of her life in her tiny village in service to a man, Addie Larue makes a deal with… whom?... for more life. And is given just that. Given theoretically endless life, that will go on until she begs to have it taken away again. The catch? She can leave no impression of any kind on the world. Marks she makes vanish without a trace, items she breaks instantly mend themselves, and anybody she meets forgets her completely the moment she’s out of sight.

The only being on Earth who remembers her at all is Luc, the being with whom she made this bargain without understanding what it really entailed. He visits her every so often through the centuries. Each time he’s certain that the horrors she survives, the crushing loneliness she lives with every day, will drive her to beg him for release.

But she doesn’t. Sometimes it’s her ability to remain in awe of the world and all it contains that keeps her going. Sometimes it’s pure, deep-seated spite—she will suffer literally anything rather than let Luc win their battle of wills. And sometimes it’s the simple, biological will to survive.

And so she does. And then in 2014, in a bookshop, she meets a man who remembers her.

Without giving too much away, I can say that I assumed from the start that this was going to be a fairly simple be-careful-what-you-ask-for fable, with lush historical scenery. That would have been enough for me. But it’s not merely that. It’s the tale of the ultimate abusive relationship and a person’s resilience and ability to be true to herself in the face of it. And it’s a celebration of wonder and of what keeps a heart going, year after year after year.

The Space Between: An Outlander Novella by Diana Gabaldon

 read by Davina Porter

I’ve spent a lot of my life in the Outlander universe. I started reading the novels when they first came out, but tapered off during the long wait between Drums of Autumn and The Fiery Cross. When that was finally published, my curiosity got the best of me and I had to dive back in and find out what happened to Jamie and Claire—but I had to start again from the beginning because I’d just forgotten too much. 

(Side note: rereading something you really enjoyed and discovering that it’s still just as delicious on a second read, when you already know what’s going to happen, is an incredible treat. Ms. Gabaldon really is a very good writer.)

Finally the TV series happened, but I was super skeptical about it. I saw the stills on social media, and the actors who played Jamie and Claire looked nothing like the Jamie and Claire in my head. I didn’t want my headcanon messed with, so I avoided it. Nevertheless it did have one effect on me: it reminded me that, after another very long wait, Ms. Gabaldon had completed another segment of the story arc. More reading to be done! And I’d never listened to the audiobooks. I had no idea what a treat I was in for: they were read by Davina Porter, whom I wasn’t yet familiar with.

That woman could read her grocery list out loud, and I’d listen. For hours. 

Then I finished listening to Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, and I needed more Outlander, so I finally gave in and gave the show a try. And found, to my surprise, that the actors who play Jaimie and Claire are actually very appealing once they start moving and talking; the stills, in which they struck me as looking like enormous waxworks, had been deceptive. (I think they were *too* beautiful in a way; it made them seem inhuman. With the human attributes of speech and motion, though, they are simply very very very beautiful. IMHO.)

And then the recent season ended, and I needed more.

I’d tried one of the Lord John novellas some years back, but in spite of being set in this universe and centering a character I quite like, I couldn’t get into it. I can’t even remember now which one it was. I’m just not a mystery-novel person. 

But when I heard about The Space Between, I was intrigued. It’s about Jaimie’s stepdaughter, Joan, who is headed to France to become a nun, because she hears voices and knows when people are about to die and she thinks a religious community is the only place she has any real chance of finding answers about this, or at least relative safety from being tried as a witch. It’s also about Michael Murray, Jaimie’s nephew, who is returning to France after the death of his wife. It’s also about… no, I can’t tell you who else it’s about, because actually that would be a huge spoiler. Let’s just say that mysteriousness abounds in this novella.

And it turned out to be a lot of fun. It’s more like a story arc on the TV series in its pacing than like the novels, but that’s not a bad thing. And it delves deeper into the occult and stays there longer than most of her novels, but in a shorter piece like this, that works well. And the characters are charming and the setting is vivid and there are all the other hallmarks of Ms. Gabaldon’s writing in this series.

In other words, this is a very worthwhile use of your time while you wait for the next full-length Jaimie-and-Claire novel. What, you didn’t know about that? It’s going to be called Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, and it’s due out later this year, most likely. You can read all about it, including some excerpts, here.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Narrated by Polly Stone

This is the story of two sisters in Vichy France during World War II. The older sister, Viann, is a school teacher and a young mother in a small village; having been more or less orphaned at age 14, she has found love and a life that she loves for herself and wants nothing more than to live that life, quiet and safe. The younger, Isabelle, is a rebellious girl who keeps getting kicked out of the various boarding schools their father, a Great War veteran and a coldly distant father, keeps sending her to. She's not willing to accept anything life hands her if it doesn't meet her standards, and doesn't see why she should be quiet about it. When the Germans invade France, each sister copes in her own way.

Viann’s husband goes off to fight in the war, so she is left taking care of their children, and teaching at the local school, and keeping up the house, with its orchard and vegetable garden. With all of these responsibilities, and with the husband she adores and relies on far away, her response to the Germans is to keep her head down and just survive, and keep her children alive, the best she can. As time goes on, though, she finds herself compelled by her own conscience to extend what protection she can offer not just to her own children, but to the son of her best friend, who is Jewish, and then to other Jewish children whose parents have been deported to the concentration camps.

Meanwhile, Isabelle is far too outspoken for her own good. After Paris is occupied, she ends up living with her sister. But she can’t bring herself to be polite to the German officer billeted at her sister’s house, or to hold her tongue when she sees atrocities being committed. Apparently she never heard of discretion being the better part of valor. When a villager catches her defacing Nazi signs, he recruits her into the local resistance. At first she just distributes pamphlets, but eventually she rescues a downed English pilot by guiding him, on foot, through the Pyrennes mountains to Spain. Having done this once, she sets up a route and does it repeatedly, under the code name "The Nightingale" and earning the irate and abiding interest of the SS.

I have my quibbles with this book. There are a couple of places near the beginning where the timeline just seems wonky and people behave as if things have been going on for weeks and months that have only been happening for a few days at most; a good editor would have corrected that. Isabelle is far too loose a cannon to be an effective member of a resistance that has to fly under the radar at all times, and Viann’s difficulties and losses feel overly sentimentalized—Isabelle’s, too, toward the end of the book. Not that they aren’t horrific difficulties and losses, but that being the case, they should stand on their own and not be sentimentalized, played to jerk tears out of the reader.

Nevertheless it’s a good read. Knowing about the way the Nazis treated the French in order to break them, and the degree to which they succeeded, is one thing; living it vicariously through an absorbing story is something else again. The author paints a vivid, complex portrait of life in a country brought to its knees, not neglecting either the humanity or the inhumanity of the invaders, nor the strengths or weaknesses of the invaded.

Recommend—especially if you plan to see the movie, which I understand will be released next year.