Last Night in Montreal

5 Responses to “Last Night in Montreal”

1. Harriet Klausner says:

   September 2, 2010 at 9:25 am

   In Brooklyn, Eli Jacobs works on his thesis on dead and dying languages. Bored but disciplined, he fails to notice until he stops late in the day that his girlfriend dishwasher Lilia Albert, who went out for a paper never came home. Apprehensive about Lila, he has no thought what happened.

   One month later, a weirder Michaela sends Eli a postcard from Montreal telling him that Lilia is living there. Relieved she is okay and leaving his intellectual snobbish friends back in the city, he heads to Canada to see Lila. Eli learns from Michaela that when Lila was seven years ancient her absentee affluent American father whom she never met before kidnapped her from her home with her Canadian mom and brother. Michaela is the daughter of private investigator Christopher Graydon who worked and obsessed over the abduction case; she resents Lila’s intrusion through her dad’s fixation in her family tree for nearly two decades.

   LAST NIGHT IN MONTREAL is an appealing character driven tale starring three wounded souls. Lilia has all sorts of relationships issues, which has led to her running away even before she and Eli stirred in together. Eli remains hurt due to Lilia’s abrupt abandonment. Finally Michaela feels her father abandoned her when he lived for the missing child case. Although at times the tale line feels forced to bring out the neurosis, the cast makes for a profound look at the downside of relationships when forlorn adults feel loved ones deserted them.

   Harriet Klausner
   
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
2. P. Moore says:

   September 2, 2010 at 10:50 am

   Based on additional readers’ reviews, I was expecting more from this novel. I am about 75% of the way through the book, and am more than ready for it to end. None of the characters is sympathetic to me, most especially Eli and Christopher, who basically drop their lives to track down a psychotic woman they are obsessed with. Maybe I missed this somehow, but where do all these characters get the money to travel all over the place lacking effective? One would assume that Christopher is being paid by Lilia’s mother, but there is no indication that she has the means to pay a PI 24/7. Flimsy plot + uninteresting characters = dull. Another reader has already mentioned the problems with the Kindle version — odd spacing, words being divided (‘En glish’ is just one example), inappropriate wrapping of lines, etc. I will slog through to the end but I wish I had not wasted my money.
   Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
3. VioletCrush says:

   September 2, 2010 at 12:23 pm

   Lilia is constantly running away, leaving behind places and people. She simply cannot make herself stay at one place; she has to keep moving. When the book opens, it’s Lilia’s last day with Eli in Brooklyn, her current boyfriend. Only Eli doesn’t know that. After the first chapter Lilia kind of disappears from the book only to appear at the end. The rest of the book is about Eli’s search for her and about Lilia’s past.

   When Lilia was 7 years ancient, she was kidnapped by her father from her mother’s house on a snow covered night. Lilia and her father keep traveling from one place to another for the dread of getting caught by the police. Lilia is still traveling when she is 15 years ancient. She has got used to this life. She has blocked out her past before her kidnapping and is reasonably pleased the way she is. Lilia knows that her mother is searching for her, but she does not want to be establish. She leaves a note in the bibles she finds in hotel rooms. She questions everyone to stop searching her and place her alone.

   Christopher is a private investigator her mother has hired to search Lilia. He gets so involved in Lilia’s case that he follows them for months leaving behind his crumbling marriage and his daughter who is more or less the same age as Lilia.

   Eli reaches Montreal when he receives a note from a name named Michaela adage that Lilia is in Montreal and to come and get her as soon as possible.

   For me this book was like a puzzle. Who was Michaela and how does she know Lilia? Why does she write to Eli? What happens to the detective? Does Eli find Lilia? Why does Lilia’s father kidnap her? And finally, will Lilia will ever be able to stop traveling and settle down?

   This book had so many layers and emotions that it’s hard to clarify what exactly this book is about. All I can say is that I loved it. There is Eli who wants to find his like, Michaela who wants some answers and then there is the private investigator who watches his family tree fall apart in front of him but does not do anything about it. The writing is gorgeous. For the sake of the review I was thinking about which sentences I should copy here. But then if I open to any page I am sure I will find something that I like. So I opened a random page and here it is. Something for you to see how gorgeous and evocative the writing is.

   He stopped at a Don’t walk signal somewhere deep into Chinatown, waiting for the direction of traffic to change. A bottle had been smashed in the gutter. He stood staring at it for a while, the mesmerizing sparkle of broken glass. A van paused a beat too long in the intersection and was attacked by a blaring cacophony of car horns. The sound brought tears to his eyes. He stood on the confront while passersby streamed around him like ghosts and lights changed from green to red to yellow to green again and the stream of traffic before him nonstop unchecked. He looked down and flecks of glass on the pavement sparkled, like crystal, like ice, tears blurring the pinpoints of light. It was a long time before he could force himself into motion.

   I do have a complaint though. There was constant switch between places, characters and time in-between chapters. Every chapter was a leap in some way. If in one, Eli was searching for Lilia in the present, the next chapter is when Lilia is say 10 years ancient. The only problem I establish with this approach is that it made the novel very simple to place down. But `Last night in Montreal’ has some memorable characters and even situations which will stay with long after you turn the last page.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
4. S. Agusto-Cox says:

   September 2, 2010 at 3:13 pm

   Emily St. John Mandel’s Last Night in Montreal reads like sketched notes in a private investigator’s pad. With chapters that alternate between the past and present and a variety of characters, readers will feel like they are investigating a child abduction case, while garnering a better know of human motives and emotions.

   Lilia Albert is abducted by her father, and as they go around the United States in and out of hotels, her sense of home is vanquished. She no longer knows how to stop and settle into a “normal” life. As an adult she continues to go from place to place, carrying with her the only photograph from her past that she has–a Polaroid of her and a waitress. Lilia is a complex character, her emotions deep not more than the surface, and she meets a variety of people along the way–Eli, an art gallery salesman effective on his thesis; Erica, a girl from Chicago with blue hair; and Michaela, an exotic dancer and part-time tightrope walker from Montreal.

   Mandel peppers each chapter with just enough description and information to keep the pages turning, as readers strive to uncover the moment when Lilia’s life changed and why it changed. But this mystery is more than what happens to Lilia, it’s about how an obsession can rip apart a private investigator’s family tree, encourage an ex-lover to step outside his comfort zone, and the heap ways in which humans react to disturbing events from the past.

   Readers will itch to reach the resolution of this abduction case, not only to learn why Lilia’s father took her from her mother and brother, but also to see Lilia recover many of her earlier memories settled behind the dust kicked up by her continuous travels. The one minor drawback could be the chapters featuring the private detective and his obsessive pursuit of Lilia and her father even when he no longer desires their capture; these chapters dispel some of the suspense built up in previous chapters. But, Eli, Michaela, and Lilia’s tale lines twist and mingle throughout the novel, and Mandel does well shifting between points of view. Last Night in Montreal is not a predictable mystery, but still satisfying.
   Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
5. Leah Smith says:

   September 2, 2010 at 5:14 pm

   Fantastic book, but the Kindle version has many spacing errors like “Cal i fornia” and “Rus sia” that make it very distracting to read.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5