I have read three books by Emily St. John Mandel in as many months. I started with her most recent novels Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel and decided to go back to her 2009 debut novel. Last Night in Montreal begins with Lilia, an enigmatic young woman who is in a relationship with Eli, a student of dying languages. She has been living with him in his New York apartment for just a short time when she goes out to get a newspaper and disappears. Eli knows little about Lilia's past but is distraught when she leaves and, when he receives information that she may be in Montreal, he decides to follow her there.
Through flashbacks we learn that as a little girl Lilia was kidnapped by her own father from the home in Quebec where she lived with her mother and her brother. Over the years the father and daughter live a fugitive life travelling by car across the US, living in motels, eating in diners, never settling in one place. They are staying one step ahead of a private detective who is obsessed with the case.
The stories of two fractured families are woven together. Lilia and Michaela are the same age. Their mothers are both emotionally and physically absent from their daughters' lives. One father abducts his daughter and is never far from her side as she grows up. The other father neglects his own daughter as he searches for the missing girl.
It is a very atmospheric book that captures the vastness of the desert seen from the backseat of a car by a child, the emptiness of an apartment occupied by one little girl, the unbearable cold of Montreal nights.
The story captivated me. This author's writing style reminds me of a skilled seamstress sewing a complicated garment together. We don't know what it will look like once it is done but she has a pattern and in the end the pieces come together beautifully and in an unexpected way.
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