Last Night in Montreal

Last Night in Montreal

Emily St. John Mandel

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

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 is 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.


From the Forum

No posts yet

Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update

Recent Reviews

Your rating:

  • yawnsbooks
    Mar 13, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    “Stop looking for me. I’m not missing; I do not want to be found. I wish to remain vanishing. I don’t want to go home - Lilia” 
     
    Just Finished Last in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel, which was a fantastic debut novel from one of my favourite authors. 
     
    Lilia Albert is not able to stay in one place, and has been leaving people behind ever since she can remember. Leaving people and abandoning places drives her. This  story is what happens when one of her lovers, Eli, decides to follow her from New York to Montreal. 
     
    The writing in this book is fantastic. It felt like reading poetry, especially with both Lilia and Eli’s characters being obsessed with dying, endangered, or extinct languages. 
     
    This story explores themes of loss, loss, healing, memory, obsession, trauma, and the difficult choices people make to protect one another. 
     
    Emily St. John Mandel excels in writing complex, lyrical stories from multiple perspectives and I can’t wait to read another of her books. 

    0
    comments 0
    Reply
  • BillieeGoatxo
    Mar 09, 2025
    Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    0
    comments 0
    Reply
  • View all reviews
    Community recs if you liked this book...