The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

One of the book’s most common refrains is the notion that “ideas are wilder than memories” (261). This is naturally a comforting thought for a woman like Addie, whose curse causes her to be lost to the collective memory of the world, yet when she first hears this axiom, it is delivered as a taunt rather than a comfort. When Luc forcibly ejects Addie from Madame Geoffrin’s salon, he tells her that while she is free to reenter the room, given that the artists and intellectuals will have already forgotten her, “I think you’ll find my word won’t fade as fast as yours. They will not remember you, of course. But ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root” (210). The implication is that the vague idea of Addie as a liar and con artist will linger, even if the conscious mind forgets. It is a variation of the concept explored by the 2010 film Inception—that an idea planted in the subconscious mind is far more persuasive than a conscious memory. Indeed, it may happen that one’s memories are not their own at all, but rather distortions fed by more deeply ingrained biases or attitudes.