Last Night in Montreal
Ratings48
Average rating3.9
Last Night in Montreal – 5 Stars:
A very impressive debut novel. The author shows total control over the structure, handling multiple timelines, characters, and perspectives with real maturity. Even here, she’s already developed the distinctive tone that made her more famous later on.
The story is absorbing, the plot is tight, and the pacing is steady—it really takes you for a satisfying ride. The rise of this writer is clearly no accident. The talent is real, and the voice is genuinely different.
ends a lot stronger than it begins and meanders a bit in the middle to the point of having already forgotten some of what occurs, but i overall really enjoyed reading this book and following the mystery through its blank slate protagonist. every ESJM book has to live in the shadow of station eleven (possibly my favorite novel ever), but i'm pretty sure this is my second favorite of her novels that i've read so far.
Stunning. Moves at an almost desperate pace which made it almost impossible to put down.
An absorbing meditation on absence and loss. Traveling (and the inverse problem of being unable to settle), an inside-out Lolita, a mystery that is the mystery of life (people come and they go, often without warning or explanation), the idea of being lost, being searched-for, wanting to remain un-found, coming to define yourself by those things. The complementary obsessions of searching for someone missing, and needing to remain free at any cost. Needing the story to end neatly even if it makes it harder for the people living it. The small changes of perspective that cast everything in a different light, that make all the difference between running away and saving yourself, between being rescued and being trapped. The limits of knowledge: of the world, of another person, of one's own story.
“That was her problem,” Eli said. “She couldn't immerse herself. It isn't enough to observe the world and take pictures of it.” He was quiet for a second and then said, “It isn't enough to just go ice-skating. Lilia's metaphor, not mine—she was talking about how she lived. About how you can skate over the surface of the world for your entire life, visiting, leaving, without ever really falling through. But you can't do that, it isn't good enough. You have to be able to fall through. You have to be able to sink, to immerse yourself. You can't just skate over the surface and visit and leave.”
“She was unmoored and her memories were eroding in the sunlight, and she was rendered shy by the strangeness of this new fast life.”
i'm a bit in two minds about whether it would've been better to read emily st. john mandel's books in order, but i actually think i can appreciate this earlier work more having read some of the later stuff.
this book is the start of the ESJMLU (emily st. john mandel literary universe) and it shows. there are so many themes and motifs here that we see her return to again in station eleven and the glass hotel. the traveling protagonists, the dipping our toes into the mystical parts of the world, the importance of cities and homes. it's really cool to recognise these things as things she is interested in exploring in her work, and it's extra fascinating to see how she's grown and developed when it comes to telling these stories.
there are a number of things that are slightly underdeveloped or unresolved in this novel in a way that i think glass hotel-emily st john mandel wouldn't let them be. but i think precisely because i know where she is heading, those things don't bother me that much. i'm sad i didn't get more than a couple of glimpses of some elements, but at the same time she's already so good at setting up this open world that it isn't hard to imagine the developments yourself, if you want.
i also think it's funny that it's in this first book there is a line that encapsulates her recognisable style so well: “This was a skittish, almost catastrophic life, in which nothing was certain; paradoxically, Lilia was unusually calm.” i like having it so explicitly said here, knowing the way her later work will spark that feeling so naturally.
“How much loss can be carried in a single human frame?”
and despite it's flaws, there are so many things here already - in earlier shapes and forms, sure, but here nonetheless - that draw me to mandel's stories. the mysteries she sets up and guides you through. you never feel like you know too much or too little - even if you want to know more you trust that she knows how she will get you there. and she does. it's a very comforting feeling.
3/5 books read. i'm living a good life working my way through emily st. john mandel's bibliography.
