Last night in Montreal - SFBA Book Club

English language

Published Dec. 25, 2009 by Unbridled Books.

(2 reviews)

Lilia Albert has been leaving people behind for her entire life. She spends her childhood and adolescence traveling constantly and changing identities. In adulthood, she finds it impossible to stop. Haunted by an inability to remember her early childhood, she moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers along with way, possibly still followed by a private detective who has pursued her for years. Then her latest lover follows her from New York to Montreal, determined to learn her secrets and make sure she s safe. Last Night in Montreal is a story of love, amnesia, compulsive travel, the depths and the limits of family bonds, and the nature of obsession. In this extraordinary debut, Emily St. John Mandel casts a powerful spell that captures the reader in a gritty, youthful world charged with an atmosphere of mystery, promise and foreboding where small revelations continuously change our understanding of the …

Lilia Albert has been leaving people behind for her entire life. She spends her childhood and adolescence traveling constantly and changing identities. In adulthood, she finds it impossible to stop. Haunted by an inability to remember her early childhood, she moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers along with way, possibly still followed by a private detective who has pursued her for years. Then her latest lover follows her from New York to Montreal, determined to learn her secrets and make sure she s safe. Last Night in Montreal is a story of love, amnesia, compulsive travel, the depths and the limits of family bonds, and the nature of obsession. In this extraordinary debut, Emily St. John Mandel casts a powerful spell that captures the reader in a gritty, youthful world charged with an atmosphere of mystery, promise and foreboding where small revelations continuously change our understanding of the truth and lead to desperate consequences. Mandel s characters will resonate with you long after the final page is turned.

4 editions

Anne reviewed Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel

My review

4 stars

Someone else wrote that her writing is like an art house movie, spare, elegant, elevating the mundane. That is part of the appeal for me. Lilia leaves Eli in Brooklyn just like she always leaves, without notice. She can't stay in one place because she doesn't know how; her childhood was spent endlessly travelling with her fugitive father. You find out why, you meet interesting people, you learn about dead languages and what it's like in Montreal in winter. Now I've read all her books and await the next which I think is due next year.

Anne

rated it

Oct 29

Subjects

Self-realization in women -- Fiction
Amnesia -- Fiction
Montréal (Québec) -- Fiction