Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Apr 09, 2010

Athira rated it:

Intense! That's what I thought once I turned over the last page. I read this right after White Oleander, so my mind is now in a huge philosophical introspection phase!

My opinion
Last Night in Montreal is a story that masterfully interweaves several complex elements. Lilia has been traveling for years, ever since her father abducted her from her home, when she was seven. For a long time, Lilia and her father were on the road. They kept moving from town to town. Lilia soon learned More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 15, 2009

Emily rated it:

I am dumbfounded that this is a debut novel. The pacing is impeccable, the characters are intriguing and well developed. The details the author chooses to highlight are poetic and evocative, and the paragraphs are well crafted. My one critique (and this has nothing to do with the author) is that the cover image is a little TOO specific to the story. I might have chosen something from the earlier part of Lilia's story, like a stark motel room or the isolated payphone, something that captures a sp More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 10, 2009

Patrick rated it:

The best debut novel I've read in years. Mandel writes with confidence and creates compelling characters around dark secrets and half-forgotten memories. This is the kind of book that stays with you long after it's over.

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 24, 2011

George rated it:

I thought this was a terrific book.

Let's start with the premise, a young man in New York wakes up with the woman he loves, and whom he thinks he knows quite well. Then, in a way that is normal and routine, she announces she's going to pick up a few items at the corner store. However, she does not return. No note, no phone call, nothing. Soon he discovers that she's traveled to Montreal, but there's no evidence she plans to come back, or even that she plans to stay in Montreal.
More...

0 comments like

Sep 15, 2010

Mary rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Jun 05, 2010

Micheal rated it:

This novel is why I became a bookseller and why after 23 years I remain one. To come across a gem like this makes slogging through many many other books we read, ones that may be goodish,or ordinary or even bad, all worthwhile. Her voice captivated me from the start and the way the story unfolds kept me reading it compulsively.

I have started to read aloud to the dogs in the mornings (don't judge - I am not crazy but reading aloud makes me slow down and listen to the lang More...

0 comments like

Mar 28, 2010

Manda rated it:

When Lilia says she is stepping out for coffee and never returns, Eli does not imagine the past he will uncover when he searches for her. A mysterious postcard from Montreal sends Eli on a wild goose chase that introduces him to a strange girl named Michaela and a few stories neither of them are ready to hear. Filled with a broken past, lost loves, and crazy moments at every turn, Last Night In Montreal is a wild ride with an amazing twist.

I absolutely adored this book. This is Emil More...

1 comment like

Dec 20, 2009

Felicity rated it:

I'm reading books so rapidly at the moment that I feel like my standards for a good read are moving gradually higher. The other option is that there is just a lot of substandard manuscripts out there, they keep getting published, and I (foolishly) keep reading them. I certainly don't think anyone has to worry about the death of the book just yet, well, maybe only the death of the good book.

I finished this one a few days ago and I'm already struggling to remember what it was about w More...

0 comments like

Aug 02, 2009

Literary Feline rated it:

Last Night in Montreal is a rather melancholy tale set in the bitter cold of winter. But the author's writing has a softness to it, a gentleness that takes away the edge without losing any of the suspense or the strength of its message. Emily St. John Mandel has a way with words. Her writing is lyrical and yet simple.

On the outset, this may seem like Lilia's story. Her father kidnapped her when she was 7 years old, and, most of her life, she was on the run, traveling by car from town More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 28, 2009

Elevate Difference rated it:

Emily St. John Mandel’s premier novel, Last Night in Montreal, is a cocktail of neurotic travel, obsession, and misunderstandings. As a child, Lilia Albert’s father abducted her and crossed the Canadian-American border, taking her away from her mother and half-brother. Once in America, they never live in one city for too long for fear of being caught by the police. Most of Lilia’s childhood takes place in a series of road trips, aliases, and motel rooms. Years later, as a young adult and after b More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 29, 2009

Violet rated it:

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 old, she was kidnapped by her father from h More...

0 comments like

Apr 22, 2009

Edan rated it:

I think this is actually a 3.5 star book for me, but I am rounding up because it's a debut novel and shows the enormous skills of this young writer. I was really impressed with the structure of this book, which balances and braids multiple time frames and places. I read this in a few days and really enjoyed myself--the mystery and secrets build as the story goes on in such a delicious way!

My main critique of the book is that one of the story's main characters, or at the least the More...

7 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 21, 2009

Ron rated it:

Most of this book was a great debut novel for this young author, examining the long-term effects of a parental "abduction" on the child, her parents, and those tasked with finding her. The child in question, Lillia, left with her father one night with her mother's home in Southern quebec, and has been traveling ever since (now in her marority, just because she can no longer not travel).

Lillia's latest lover in Brooklyn, Eli; Christopher Graydon, the private investigator fr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 16, 2009

Serena rated it:

Emily St. John Mandel's Last Night in Montreal reads like sketched notes in a private investigator's notebook. 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 understand of human motives and emotions.

"She'd been disappearing for so long that she didn't know how to stay." (Page 9 of the uncorrected proof)

Lilia Albert is abducted by More...

0 comments like

Sep 19, 2011

Elyse rated it:

I'm in *aw* of this new young author. She's intriguing to me. Her book was beautifully written (SO CLEAN ---not filled extra junk). At times, I read her sentences 'over & over', (almost a poetic style)--- JUST lovely choice of words!

"Her voice was somnambulant" ....."her voice was a current through fitful dreams" ----[well, I'll tell ya....I had my own 'nightmare'---involving rushing waters-- after thinking about this section of the book]....NO KIDDING--- Th More...

0 comments like

Aug 25, 2011

Tess rated it:

Last Night in Montreal is a novel full of loners, lost causes, infatuation disguised as love and vice versa, broken families, bitter cold, unknowable secrets, and betrayal. It all starts on a cold midnight in Quebec when seven-year-old Lilia is abducted by her father, taken across the border, and on a Lolita style roadtrip across the U.S. that she cannot shake even fourteen years later. She leaves lovers in every city, except one of them cannot leave her and tracks her down to Montreal. Equally More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 14, 2011

Keirstan rated it:

Emily St. John Mandel’s Last Night in Montreal is a book I was prepared to love. The novel came to me under the best of circumstances: remembered while perusing the excellently stocked shelves of Los Angeles’s landmark bookstore Skylight Books on vacation earlier this month. I was hooked as I started reading on the drive back to Phoenix, but unfortunately, as the plot wore on and I transitioned out of vacation mode, the novel steadily lost its appeal. An interesting premise and well-executed More...

0 comments like

Oct 21, 2010

Kirby rated it:

This month, my book club read Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel. I kind of hated it for the first 50 pages– mostly because it was following a do-nothing twenty-something living in Williamsburg, who was having a crisis over the fact that he couldn’t finish his thesis on dead languages and felt no fulfillment working part-time in a pretentious art gallery. Then, he meets this girl, and she’s so “different from everyone else”–she’s a dishwasher, but she knows 4.5 languages, reads vo More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2010

Emily rated it:

"Last Night in Montreal" is the story of several dysfunctional characters. Lilia is abducted at age 7 by her father, who did not have custody of her. She and her father spend the next 9 years traveling from place to place avoiding investigators. It comes as no surprise that as an adult Lilia is incapable of staying in one place for too long. She roams the country, leaving a trail of jilted lovers in her wake. Which brings us to Eli, an untethered intellectual who inexplicably cannot le More...

0 comments like

Nov 08, 2010

Sally rated it:

This book has some ideas that interest me about thoughts expressed specific to cultures and therefore to those languages, about being isolated if you don't speak the predominant language, and about the isolation of having been brought up rootless. I enjoyed half of the story, half of the characters, those who were running away. The other half, the ones pursuing, I couldn't like. I couldn't understand the motivation and why they were cast as having been circus people. It seemed to me that the More...

0 comments like

Oct 16, 2010

Andrea rated it:

Last Night in Montreal is forgettable for the most part.

The story is about a girl named Lilia who is in her early twenties and has a habit of vanishing. She tells her boyfriend, Eli, that she will leave him one day and disappear. Despite this knowledge, Eli asks Lilia to move in with him, and five months later she leaves "to buy the newspaper" and never comes back.

Eli is deeply upset by Lilia's leaving and decides to try and find her. Which is strange to me, con More...

0 comments like

Mar 06, 2010

Suzanne rated it:

Last Night in Montreal is full of disappearances. A seven-year-old girl is abducted by her father in the middle of the night, leaving only footprints in the snow. A wife and mother gives her husband a cake, and then disappears. Languages become extinct.

St. John Mandel has a quirky, delicate voice. Although some elements in this story of a girl-gone-missing and the people who follow her strain credulity (is it really possible to live in a place for 20 years and not pick up the basics More...

0 comments like

Jul 14, 2009

Laura rated it:

This was a beautiful book that pulled me into the lives of the characters.

I was fascinated by Lilia's childhood on the run, in seeing the effect on her as an adult, and puzzling the reasons behind what had happened to her.

I was hooked on this book when Eli explained his interest in dead and dying languages. Eli's character was lost-- not sure where he was going with his own life. When Lilia steps into his life, then back out again, he wants to help her, and to make sur More...

0 comments like

Jul 15, 2011

Sushila rated it:

It was fun to read Last Night in Montreal, the work of a young, new author. I absolutely loved the first few chapters of the book. The prose seemed fresh and the concept original. Although the writing was detailed, it was also fast-paced. I think Mandel did a wonderful job portraying Eli, although I guess he was the most "normal" of the main characters.

As the novel progressed, it was still enjoyable and I was very motivated to keep reading. However, while Mandel's wri More...

0 comments like

Mar 16, 2011

C. Michael rated it:

Truthfully, I didn't really get into Last Night in Montréal until I was over halfway through it. True, there was intrigue from the first few pages, but I didn't develop enough of an emotional interest in the characters for me to really care about their mysteries and distress for another hundred or so pages. Until that point, reading was more or less drudgery.

The plot of the novel itself is at least partially responsible, as the revelation of the suspense that pushes the work relentle More...

0 comments like

Jun 04, 2010

Lisa rated it:

I started this book on the beach in Cuba and the beginning didn't really catch my attention until I returned and really got into it. A suspenseful story, deep characters, beautifully descriptive language, identifiable themes...this book has it all. Except for the ending, it definitely didn't satisfy me as much as I was hoping it would.

Here is a part that i particularly liked:

How deep in our genes is the longing for flight embedded? We always were a species of nomads. Eli More...

0 comments like

Jun 20, 2009

Tamara rated it:

The plot of this book was outstanding, as was its craftsmanship in structure. The novel juxtaposes the childhood experiences of a girl continuously changing identities while on the run with her non-custodial father after he abducts her, with the impacts this case has on the adults involved. This is a strong showing for a first novel. However, it is also marked with some of the flaws common to author's initial efforts. It can be heavy-handed at times (i.e. the name of the town where Lilia & h More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 03, 2010

Weena rated it:

This was an interesting story about a young woman who can't make herself stay in one place for very long. It all begins on a bitter cold night with her footprints in the snow and broken glass scattered about. She was escaping from something, but what? Why is her father, whom she hasn't seen in over a year, suddenly taking her away into the night? She doesn't remember anything before that moment, and later, she can't explain why she leaves her lovers without warning over and over again. It's trag More...

0 comments like

Feb 11, 2010

Toni rated it:

This debut novel by Mandel is a breath of fresh air, quite enjoyable. It is wonderfully and expertly written to provoke emotions without being of any specific genre. The novel has its share of mystery with a psychological undertone. I believe it will appeal to those who enjoy reading novels based around a variety of topics and styles.

The novel brings together the stories of four people: Eli who follows Lilia to Montreal after she leaves him, Christopher, the private detective More...

0 comments like

Dec 08, 2010

Emily rated it:

This book was really weird for me. Midway though I thought I didn't like it. Then when I was almost done with it, everything came together and hit me in the gut in a way that wasn't particularly surprising (the plot is very easy to follow and very predictable for the most part) but the language was just so--stunning that I went along with everything and just fell into this gut-wrenching hole the author developed. There really isn't much of a story going on which is to say it's not a particularly More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

reviews