2025 #13 Last Night in Montreal (Mandel)

 

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Melancholy and poignant, Last Night in Montreal invites the reader into an exploration of "not all who wander are lost" by expanding the meaning of being lost, and the meaning of wandering. Lilia is a wanderer, lost in her own forgetting, but not moving without aim. Eli wanders aimlessly in his own life, until his journey takes him to Montreal in search of something he didn't know he was looking for. Abduction and rescue are blurred, as are concepts of lost and found. The book is centered around the development of the characters, and while the plot is slow (by traditional standards), that's not the focus of the book. That said, I found myself a bit frustrated at the predictability of some of the plot points, although the point is not about the happening, but the secrecy and the invisible hold these events have on different characters. The juxtaposition of the father-daughter duos: Lilia and her father, and Christopher and Michaela, is artful and the dipping in and out of the past lends a much needed diversity to the plot, which could otherwise be subsumed (in the second half) by a perceived stalemate between Eli and Michaela. The book is heavy, cast in a sense of longing and learning lessons the hard way, but also very beautiful in its language and the way it lays bare human frailty (and strength).

I quibble quietly with a few characterizations, e.g. Eli's incompetence in French --one does not get to the level of writing a dissertation on dead languages with absolutely NO familiarity with French (or at least its roots). It is a bit frustrating to have so little backstory as to Lilia's scars, only because the act of violence is offered almost as an afterthought. I wanted to know more about Simon, the quiet hero.

It might be called a mystery, but more a mystery of the soul, rather than of plot. The book does not resort to clichés in the end (thank you), but the end of the novel feels a bit like an epilogue that tries hard to "tidy up" some of the loose threads. Still, one is well-advised to read (or listen) without worrying about the destination, as it truly is about the journey (with apologies for my own cliché).

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