Customer Reviews

Last Night in Montreal

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

When Lilia says she is stepping out for coffee and never returns, Eli does not imagine the past he will uncover when he searches for her. A mysterious postcard from Montreal sends Eli on a wild goose chase that introduces him to a strange girl named Michaela and a few stories neither of them are ready to hear. Filled with a broken past, lost loves, and crazy moments at every turn, Last Night In Montreal is a wild ride with an amazing twist.

I absolutely adored this book. This is Emily St. John Mandel's first novel and it was stellar. The writing was intelligent and masterful. The plot was new and exciting. I loved the structure of the story and how Mandel presented both the present and the past. I was drawn into this story almost immediately and could not tear myself away from it. I love that the pain and the hurt are so real in this book, but they are not overwhelming to the point of disbelief. Though you do not get a lot about herself from Lilia's point of view, I felt that I learned so much about her from the other characters. Eli was an amazing character and I really loved everything about him. He is incredibly brilliant and some of the discussions he has about the artistic world are just amazing. The references to linguistics and dialects have me wanting to research these topics after reading about them. Mandel did an amazing job with this novel and I can not wait to read more of what she writes in the future.

Review originally posted on my blog Draw A Blank.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Unbridled Books. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255 : "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

When I first heard that the protagonist of Last Night in Montreal was unable to remember her childhood, I was concerned about finding a cliched amnesia story. Not at all. Through carefully drawn characters and pitch-perfect descriptions of Lily's obsessions and abandonments, Emily Mandel drew me in quickly and held my interest through the final page. I want more.

This is a helluva beautifully wonderful book. It is gorgeously written. Sentences are both poetic & noir, like a female Hemingway. Tough & tender. I had previously reached page 128 & then started reading again at midnight & couldn't stop until I finished the book at 2 a.m.
I was totally engrossed by the characters & the story. Childhood abduction. Childhood saving. A too sentimental private eye with apparent ESP. Two families torn apart. Love. A love of travel. An inability to stop moving from place to place. An ability to make connections with people. Quickly & deeply. Intelligence. A father loving a daughter enough to make her the center of his life until she leaves him to make a life of her own. A young man willing to lose everything to search for the woman he loves even though she told him she always leaves, in the end. Traveling circus people. Stops in Brooklyn, New Mexico, Arizona, Montreal, & Rome. Children saving children. Disappearances. Abandonment. Suicide. Attempted suicides. Stopping & finding love & having children. An ending which breaks my heart, but is supposed to be a happy one.
I loved this book!

Eli doesn't realize that when Lilia leaves his Brooklyn apartment to go get the paper, she has left for good. Not until several hours later when he looks up from his graduate thesis and realizes she has disappeared. Something Lilia has been doing since she was seven years old.

Lilia had not seen her father for years until one night, when she is seven, he tosses ice at her window and her home in Montreal. She immediately goes outside into his arms and they leave forever. They never stay anywhere longer than a couple of days, traveling around the US. Lilia writes in each bedside motel bible, unknown to her father variations of this: "I am not missing. Stop searching for me. I wish to remain vanishing. I don't want to go home."
Christopher Graydon is the private detective who becomes obsessed with finding her while neglecting his own daughter, Michaela.

Lilia ends up in Montreal after leaving Eli and meets up with Michaela who then sends Eli a postcard to come get her. But she refuses to tell Eli where she is until her own agenda is met.

my review: I LOVED this book. I thought it was meaningful and compelling. Lilia is a mysterious, tragic figure as is Michaela. Eli is caught up by both of their stories and this makes for a brilliant debut novel.

I also found the discussion of Eli's thesis on endangered languages to be very interesting, enough so that I am looking for a book to read more about this. I also found the language laws of Quebec to be fascinating as I was unaware of this. I also love reading books that lead me to other books or interests.

But Lilia's story is the driving force that kept me hooked: why did she leave with her father, why did he come get her, why even as an adult can Lilia not stop vanishing?

This is another fairly short novel that tells an amazing story in less than 300 pages. Run out and buy this book, I highly recommend it!

my rating 5/5

I have a hard time being too critical- fiction is so subjective! But for me, this book was a little to starry-eyed and slow. I wanted to scream at Eli, get over her already. The whole Williamsburg scene felt a tiny bit precious- and Lilia, I just had a hard time ever warming to her. There was something cold and distant, I just never connected (but see, this here is where fiction is subjective- I'm sure lots of girls maybe got her- Lilia, and this book- just wasn't my type.) All that said, the writing was lovely.

Lilia may have a remarkable childhood, but her memories are like everyone else's memories, ordinary to herself, extraordinary to a stranger.

Since she was seven, she has been living on the run with her father, escaping a past that is only illuminated bit by bit in interlocking narratives between past and present.

The narrative turned dark once Eli, her latest boyfriend, arrives in Montreal to look for Lilia. The cold realities provide a stark contrast to the present as the characters break through their resistance and dependence on the past to finally create a startling new future.

I am looking forward to Ms. Mandel's next novel.

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel is an exquisite debut novel filled with fragile characters holding on to situations that may or may not define them. It is about being lost and not wanting to be found; being adrift in a city dominated by a completely different culture and trying to remain centered; and finding out whether you are happier in motion or in one place. Lilia is a 22-year-old woman who has never known a permanent address for more than a decade. Her father abducted her as a young child and the pair never ceased traveling across the United States for fear of being caught.

Mandel excels in her craft by utilizing visual descriptions, detailed characterizations and a heartfelt, surprising story. Last Night in Montreal is a provocative, spellbinding novel.

Ms. St. John Mantel's first novel is about Lilia Albert. At seven, Lilia Albert is visted by her father, a man that she hasn't seen in about one year, and taken by him from her rural Canadian home in the middle of the night. As a result, she never sees her mother or brother, with whom she already lives, again. Instead her father, who has his own money, moves her from one American city to another, sometimes not spending more than a few hours or a night in one place. Along the way, he provides for Lilia's education - she mostly learns languages while he's driving, upon which she is quizzed later on.

At the beginning of the novel, though, we know none of this. We meet Lilia as a twenty something dishwasher who is living in New York City - Brooklyn to be exact - and she is dating a young graduated student named Eli. Eli is in love with her so when Lilia leaves him somewhat unceremoniously as only she can, his spirit is utterly ravaged and he is left devastated. As Eli begins to search for her, he learns about Lilia and we learn about her at the same time, as the story is told through the alternating viewpoints of a private investigator (hired by Lilia's mother to find her), Eli, and the private investigator's daughter, who feels and actually is utterly neglected by her father's obssession in finding Lilia.

I loved this book - it was a wonderfuly, quirky and deep novel that kept me reading. I really wanted to learn all that I could about Lilia - she was so mysterious - I wanted to know why she did what she did and where she had come from and why she had been taken by her absentee father. Nothing seemed to be revealed at once and making revelations in a manner like pulling back onion peels also made this book really, really special.

This book was very good, I found the flow to be easy and kept my interest. The characters were well developed and the overall mood could have been heavy and dark, but Mandel did a great job at infusing hope and light into an what could have been a disheartening tale. I think this would translate wonderfully into film.

I know many of you agree with me that it is always a treat to read a book published by Unbridled Books. They always seem to have the most gorgeous artwork on their covers, and their books just always seem to be a little "special." I recently read one of their latest releases LAST NIGHT IN MONTREAL by Emily St. John Mandel, and I thought this book was just wonderful. Once again, Unbridled does not disappoint!

I have actually been procrastinating about writing this review because I don't think I'm articulate enough to capture my feelings about this novel. I found this book to be completely engrossing, and there are just so many good things to say about it. I'll start with the writing because I think that's the thing that has stayed with me the most. Ms. Mandel's style of storytelling is really something special. The story alternates between the lives of the different characters, and it also goes back and forth between present day and the past. I was very much impressed with how the author managed to juggle all this -- it really was just so well done and the transitions were flawless. In addition, I just loved how the book flowed; and it seemed as if each word in this book was there for a particular reason -- whether it was to give the reader a better understanding of the characters or to evoke a certain feeling.

I also truly appreciated the characters in this novel as well as how Ms. Mandel developed them. The story basically covers the lives of four main characters, and each one was deeply complex and flawed. I love how the author gradually unfolded the pasts of the characters so that the reader was able to gain an understanding of their current situations. These characters are just so memorable and have remained in my thoughts even after I finished reading the story.

Not only did I appreciate the characters, but I also thought the basic storyline of this novel was very interesting. I know that part of the reason I enjoyed this story so much was the characters and how the author told the story, but I was also very intrigued by the mystery angle of the book. I was desperate to understand what occurred in the past to set this entire chain of events into motion. I couldn't read fast enough to learn about the characters' lives, and I was fascinated by the effect that their individual actions had on each of the other characters.

LAST NIGHT IN MONTREAL is Emily St. John Mandel's debut novel, and I have to say that I was just blown away. Her prose is absolutely beautiful and her characters are so well-developed. I found myself hesitating to set this book down because the author just drew me into the story. You just have to check out the Chapter 1 excerpt that is available on her website to see what I mean about her writing. I am hoping that the author has another novel in the works because I will definitely be reading it!

A little aside: Emily St. John Mandel was at BEA, and I'm so disappointed that I didn't get to meet her. I would have loved to have the chance to tell her how wonderful I think she is in person. To make matters even worse, I found out that we were both at the BEA Tweetup Party on Friday night and I didn't even know it!

LAST NIGHT IN MONTREAL would make an incredible selection for book clubs. I highly recommend it as a discussion book or just a fantastic summer read. Either way, there are so many things that will be running through your head while reading this novel; and I can pretty much guarantee that you'll want to discuss it with someone. Some of the topics for discussion include abuse, family dynamics, escapism, sacrifice, abandonment, and (my favorite) obsession to name just a few. This novel just offers so much food for thought!