Last Night in Montreal – Emily St. John Mandel

I can’t remember where I read about this book, maybe it was the advertisement in the New York Times Book Review, but to be honest, once I knew it was Unbridled Books, that may have been where I saw it.

The door is swinging open for the independent world of book publishing as the larger trade houses seem to be feeling this sharp end of the stick…so when I read a fantastic debut like this, (the author is thirty years old) I have to wonder…if she even bothered submitting this to the majors, and just went straight to Unbridled Books. This book is almost too good to be true, it has that onion effect, where you think it’s going one way and then suddenly switches tones, but only slightly and goes another direction. And while your catching up, the story peels another layer on top of the one you’ve just read.

This isn’t a book that comes out of a woman who is thirty years old, more like a woman who is sixty years old and has done some living. I don’t know if the world is ready for a book this good, something this profound, shockingly real and so hard to put down. It’s a simple premise, a woman walks out on her boyfriend and disappears, like gone, as in…he can’t find her. The boyfriend Eli is probably the most crudely drawn man in this book, the others are father figures, who either desert their daughters or save them from a cruel parent.

Lilia leaves Eli not because he’s done something to her but only because she can’t stay in one place for very long. We quickly learn through brilliantly woven flashback that Lilia and her father had traveled around the United States after he took her from the home of her own mother in the middle of the night when she was a kid. These sections are spooky and felt so vivid that it seemed like a certain kind of smoke was coming off them that would eventually clear and reveal her fathers true intentions but for some reason never really does. When Lilia and her father finally arrive at a hotel in the middle of no where and she decides to call home after seeing herself on the television as part of a missing persons investigation…this section will leave you breathless. Father and daughter spend most of the book trying to outrun their past, erasing it every chance they get.

It’s not the only part of this fractured narrative, (Which is genius execution. Why then does every agent and editor out there tells me it doesn’t sell?) that will leave you wondering why Mandel isn’t already a household name. While Eli searches for the mysterious Lilia, we get more glorious flashbacks to the detective who is chasing Lilia as a girl. When this section starts in the book something will shift inside your mind and suddenly you’ll see the forest through the trees. Across the country the detective’s daughter who is the same age as Lilia begins her own descent into loneliness and is essentially left alone by her parents. Michaela is a self-propelled victim on the start of an obsessive search for the elusive Lilia. What’s most attractive about this writing is its ability not to insult you, and its path isn’t lined with pretty white stones to keep you on track. Each section of this book reveals another moment in time about Lilia’s life, her travels, and Michaela’s ability to not only see everything at once, but keep Eli on a very slow up hill climb…which will leave you wondering if he’ll find Lilia, why he does want to find her, and why Michaela is as warped as she seems to be.

Above this wonderful character piece are moments of pure beauty and clarity, Mandel writes setting and scene better than anyone working today, at least of what I read. There is a relaxed muscularity to this prose, a kind of educated style that is both impressive and shows a great deal of restraint. It’s spare but extremely effective. I’m not surprised that Unbridled took a chance on this book, mainstream publishers would probably shy away from the fractured narrative but it’s the main reason I read this book and couldn’t take my eyes off it.

-JR