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A review by athenaowl
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
5.0
Other than Station Eleven this is my favorite of Emily St. John Mandel's books. The writing is absolutely masterfully done, I felt like every other page there was a line that was so poignant or beautiful that stayed with me.
The story centers around Lilia, who was abducted/rescued from her abusive mother by her father and spent her entire childhood on the run with her father. She traveled so frequently and got so used to leaving every place that by the time she was an adult, she didn't know how not to leave. She left her boyfriend Eli, in New York, but after getting contacted by a stranger, Eli travels to Montreal where Michaela claims to know where Lilia is. Eli learns of how Michaela's father was one of the detectives trying to find Lilia and how his obsessive search broke their family. Like many of Madel's novels, the characters are lost, broken people searching for something intangible. A lot of the novel feels almost dreamlike, trying to grasp on to the swirling pieces of the story and find a way to fit them together before you have all the information.
I really like how Madel weaves in some kind of mysticism or otherworldly power into a story otherwise so set in realism. Some people may be turned off by this, but I think she does it so well that I find myself happily suspending my disbelief to fall into the story.
Read if:
- You like novels with multiple stories that are interconnected and only fully revealed at the end
- You like changes in perspective and time jumps
- You enjoy complicated female characters
- You enjoy classical references and metaphors
Don't read if:
- You want a nicely tied up ending
- You prefer having at least one easily likeable character
- You want a clear moral POV
The story centers around Lilia, who was abducted/rescued from her abusive mother by her father and spent her entire childhood on the run with her father. She traveled so frequently and got so used to leaving every place that by the time she was an adult, she didn't know how not to leave. She left her boyfriend Eli, in New York, but after getting contacted by a stranger, Eli travels to Montreal where Michaela claims to know where Lilia is. Eli learns of how Michaela's father was one of the detectives trying to find Lilia and how his obsessive search broke their family. Like many of Madel's novels, the characters are lost, broken people searching for something intangible. A lot of the novel feels almost dreamlike, trying to grasp on to the swirling pieces of the story and find a way to fit them together before you have all the information.
I really like how Madel weaves in some kind of mysticism or otherworldly power into a story otherwise so set in realism. Some people may be turned off by this, but I think she does it so well that I find myself happily suspending my disbelief to fall into the story.
Read if:
- You like novels with multiple stories that are interconnected and only fully revealed at the end
- You like changes in perspective and time jumps
- You enjoy complicated female characters
- You enjoy classical references and metaphors
Don't read if:
- You want a nicely tied up ending
- You prefer having at least one easily likeable character
- You want a clear moral POV