Parents are supposed to nurture and protect their children.
They are supposed to be there when they get cuts, bruises and are afraid of the dark.
Understanding their fears, concerns and listening to them when they needed to talk is supposed to be what parents do.
But, that is not always the case and certainly not in the case of the major characters in this heartbreaking, thought provoking and unsettling novel that grabs the reader from the first word and keeps you spelling bound until you turn the last page.
Last Night In Montreal starts off with these very powerful words, "No one stays forever.
" That is very true sometimes.
As the story opens with Lilia Albert and Eli in a relationship where one half of the partnership committed to the other and the second, although committed needs to find her way and leave without warning the other.
The reasons behind her sudden departure and why her life is really one place after another and no place at all, will keep you entranced, enthralled and more until you turn the last page and read the last word.
This is not a real mystery in the true sense of the word.
It is a mystery of why three young people lived their lives so differently, yet the same.
Abducted in the middle of the night by her father, Lilia Albert spends her entire childhood hiding from her past and creating her own kind of present and future.
She learns at an early age how to blend in and disappear into the background no matter where her father takes her and no matter where they go.
As she so aptly states it, "I am not going anywhere, I am just leaving where I am and going someplace else.
" Never really feeling safe or comfortable and always looking over her shoulder for the police or someone to take her back to her mother, Lilia and her father spend their lives on the run, never looking back.
Michaela, the same age as Lilia is another lost sole trying to find herself and hoping to receive the love, understanding and compassion that parents are supposed to give their children when they are growing up.
Michaela's mother is discontented with her life and she leaves her and her father without warning and never coming back.
Christopher, a police officer and later private detective becomes consumed and immersed in finding out what happened to Lilia that he not only neglects his family causing his wife to justify leaving, but literally abandons a child whose only fault is wanting her father's attention and love.
Leaving her for months and longer Michaela immerses herself in a life in Montreal that involves, taking prescription drugs, short-term relationships that are meaningless but help her to survive and a friendship with another young girl who she meets and learns to hate- Lilia.
Throughout the novel we meet not only Michaela and learn of her tragic and heartbreaking childhood and reasons for hating and resenting Lilia, but we learn of Lilia who never seems to be able to really find a place to feel safe and Michaela who spends her youth on her own, trying to find someplace to fit in but never does.
In the background we meet Simon, Lilia's stepbrother, we briefly meet her mother, and Clara her father's new love interest, and we get to understand why her father abducted her to live a life on the run and not face her past.
Lilia is abducted and is found by her father with horrible cuts and bruises on her arms.
Simon, her stepbrother is instrumental in her abduction for all of the right reasons.
What really happened to her? Why can't she remember that fateful night in Montreal when her father saved her from a fate that could have been worse? This reviewer will not divulge the reasons behind her father's motives and her mother's actions.
Christopher, Michaela's father becomes so consumed with finding her that he does not care or worry about what solving this case has done to his daughter both emotionally and psychologically.
Even her school's officials are told not to interfere or call her parents for any reason.
Eli, the last person that Lilia has some type of solid relationship in Brooklyn, is studying lost languages for his thesis but is entranced with Lilia and leaves everything behind to go and find her.
Learning to use maps at an early age Lilia travels her way throughout the United States and the world using maps, her instinct and her intelligence as a guide for survival.
The ending is hopeful in some ways and tragic in others.
You definitely do not see the twist at the ending coming.
Everyone wants a happy ending but sometimes that is not really possible nor would it fit into plot of this novel.
Lilia and Michaela glide through life on thin ice often trying to not to fail and fall in.
But, life does not work that way and we get stronger by learning from our failures.
Michaela, with the help of Eli could possibly have avoided her "Last Night in Montreal" with a different outcome.
Only reading the book will tell you the end results or outcome.
Lies, abuse, unhappy memories that fade and are forgotten and parents who never really should have been blessed with our most precious possession: Children.
This novel helps us understand the lives of abused children in a different way.
It does not describe only physical harm, but the emotional harm and abuse that remains with a child forever and spills over even as an adult.
Emily St.
John's novel although quite profound and thought provoking does bounce back and forth too many times from the past to the present and sometimes making it difficult to tell which time period we are reading about and which characters she is describing or telling about.
It becomes apparent that she is focusing her story on Lilia but often intersected her life with Michaela's.
I think I would have liked to learn more about their friendship by having more chapters or scenes with them in the same room, not just at the end where all is revealed.
This book is a must read for all parents, educators, guidance counselors, and those who love a mystery with a different kind of flavor and flair.
I would definitely recommend this book to everyone who loves children and cherishes them as much as I do.
Fran Lewis: reviewer