The story is told from different angles so that you get the perspective of the characters Lilia’s story has impacted.

The book is a series of little bits of overlapping color that finally create a full picture.Įli is working to complete his thesis on the lost and disappearing languages of the world and the author beautifully weaves snippets of information about these languages throughout the story (my whole review could have just been lines and paragraphs and chapters, I liked the writing so much.) And Lilia takes photographs, thousands of photographs, which she has done since she was little, hoping to document the lost moments of her life. And just as you are getting the rhythm of the road the story switches perspective again and you are back with Eli who gives you a few more details of the days before Lilia left him. A childhood spent on the road, running from the police after her father abducts her. Right as you are hooked into what is happening to Eli the story changes perspective and tone and you are swept back into the mystery of Lilia’s childhood. You learn why as the pieces of their story are revealed, one at a time, chapter by chapter. Somehow he knows Lilia, his girlfriend of only a few months has left of her own volition. The boyfriend, Eli, does not call the police (for some reason in these kinds of books no one ever calls the police) he just tries to reconstruct the last day to see if he missed a clue. The book starts out very Gone Girl: A woman disappears from a Brooklyn apartment and her boyfriend spends days trying to figure out where she went and why. The 10 minutes it took to get above ground felt like an hour, so badly did I want to find out what happened next. The dilemma that faced me as I read was not how to get out of reviewing the book but rather that I was whipping through the pages and by the time I had finished the excerpt I was still underground and unable to download the rest to keep reading. I downloaded a sample chapter to my phone so I could read it on my subway ride home. But a promise is a promise so I owed it to the Publisher to at least read the book.

What would I do then? Pretend I would review it but “never get around to it”? Or be forced to write a review about a book I didn’t like? It was a moral dilemma to say the least. John Mandel and had no idea if I would like the book. John Mandel whose latest book, Station Eleven, was nominated for the National Book Award, you have to take the request seriously.

When a Publisher asks you to review a book, in this case, Last Night in Montreal, and the book is written by Emily St.

Last night in montreal emily mandel