Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Title: Last Night in Montreal
Year of publication: 2009
Page count: 254
Rating: ★★★★★
It’s been a while since I’ve been this affected by a book; it’s certainly been ages since I practically inhaled one as quickly as this. Hard to believe that Last Night in Montreal was Mandel’s debut novel, as it already has all the trademark elements of her later successes, fully realized: The multiple perspectives, places, and timelines, slowly intersecting, skillfully weaving together. It may objectively not be her best work, but it’s my favorite—it was one of those rare instances of reading a book at just the right time. It resonated deeply, and I fell into it, completely absorbed, and emerged from its dreamlike pages less than a day later, feeling insubstantial and unreal.
“[They] shared [a] suspicion that the world might prove, in the end, to have been either a mirage or a particularly elaborate hoax.”
The idea of a person unmoored—untethered from other people, adrift in the world—is a recurring, ubiquitous theme in Mandel’s novels, but so is that of the power of life’s fleeting connections. Lilia was abducted by her father when she was seven years old, and she’s been traveling all over the United States under changing identities ever since, so used to leaving that she doesn’t know how to stay. Her memories begin with her abduction, and she is haunted by unexplained scars and a childhood she can’t remember—she restlessly and compulsively moves from city to city, collecting and abandoning lovers, unable to shake the feeling of still being pursued. The book begins with her latest disappearance, but this time, the abandoned lover follows her trail from New York City to Montreal, determined to uncover her secret.
“She was shocked by the exhilaration of solo travel. She pressed her forehead against the bus window and watched the landscape passing by, anguished and exultant and perfectly free. In those days she was tightly wound and always ready to cry, and life seemed fraught with an almost unbearable intensity.”
Mandel’s mystery is like a fogged up mirror slowly clearing; she has a remarkable talent for plotting its unfurling in a way that feels completely organic. Truth be told, everything about this story is implausible, each character has a highbrow pretension about them, and their motivations—especially those of the men on Lilia’s trail—remain elusive… yet the writing is so confident, and the way the fractured narrative knits together so compelling, I quite simply didn’t care. I have wanted to crawl inside each of her novels so far, but Last Night in Montreal is the first one I read quite this ravenously. 4.5 stars rounded up for the spell-binding effect it had on me.
“She moved over the surface of life the way figure skaters move, fast and choreographed, but she never broke through the ice, she never pierced the surface and descended into those awful beautiful waters, she was never submerged and she never learned to swim in those currents, these currents: All the shadows and light and splendorous horrors that make up the riptides of life on earth.”
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