Last Night in Montreal

I adore this book. Something about it is just absolutely, shatteringly lovely. Few of the characters are particularly likable, as people, but all of them are compelling in some way. Tragedy pervades the narrative, but never chokes it. There are enough questions to keep the reader moving toward the end, and the answers, once revealed, are satisfying. The prose is gorgeous and absolutely a joy to read. I did find the ending a bit abrupt, but I also enjoyed it.

Emily St John Mandel is a fine writer and one comes across sentences that cry out to be read aloud. However Last Night in Montreal is no Station Eleven. It introduces lots of characters you would love to get to know. But the people of this book remain enigmas. When highly dramatic events are described late in the book, you have no idea if the actions described flow rationally and naturally or not. You don’t know – and to a sad degree, you don’t care – whether the protagonist would have found it in her to stop traveling.

Emily St. John Mandel writes well about loss and dislocation. She displays this masterfully in her post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven, but she also exploits this theme with great satisfaction in Last Night in Montreal. She takes the disappearance of a young girl a common enough theme in recent literature and elevates it into a meditation on the sense of loss which pervades our life

We are all existentially anxious that somewhere, somehow, we are missing out on something. This novel takes that feeling and gives it concrete expression. In the process, she lays out our deepest desire for a home we never seen to find.

I’m a big fan of St. John Mandel, and this book is another amazing work. Her writing just draws you in. This book flows from the respective points of view of the 2 main characters, and flows back and forth through time and relationship. It is a quick read, easily accomplished in just a few hours, but as always with her books, I find myself wanting to slow down and keep reading because I don’t want it to end. A must read for any fan of St. John Mandel, or anyone who enjoys a good book in general.

The best writers ensure their readers time is well invested. Emily St. John Mandel is such a writer.
Once upon a time a dancer, Emily, the artist, pirouettes so gracefully that Emily, the writer now invites, inspires her readers to dance with her. Reading her words, I am exhilarated, enthralled, so engaged I dont realize how seamlessly she folds the eternal into the ephemeral, how discreetly she glides with a musicians glissando from one pitch to another. Her words evoke sights sounds, scents, a sense of touch with such rhythm, Im rhapsodized so captivated by the skill with which she conjures her fantasy, Ive become an active participant having long ago forgotten I began as a reader.
Synesthesia is a condition in which a sensory stimulus presented in one modality evokes a sensation in a different modality. Emily St. John Mandel is the rarest of artists one who can provoke the sensation of synesthesia in her readers in plain language, she invites you into the fantasy she creates, she suspends your disbelief, you live in her world, and hope there will always be another page to turn.

If you’ve not yet discovered Emily St. John Mandel turn to the first page of Last Night in Montreal. See if you can stop with just one.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member