Imagine driving forever, motel to motel, town to town, with nothing but a series of used cars and your father to keep you company, the only one capable of reminding you of your past closed off to the idea of talking about it. Lilia, one protagonist of Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel, was “abducted” at the age of seven, being wisped away by her father in the middle of the night. However, Lilia doesn’t seem to have any ill-willed against her capturer. In fact, she seems almost thankful.
Last Night in Montreal takes place in a shifting timeline with varying perspectives, ranging from Eli, Lilia’s most recent left-behind-lover, to Christopher, a private detective on her case, to young Lilia on the road (on the run) during her childhood. These different perspective seem to have varying controlling values. What I’d like to focus on in this analysis of Mandel’s mimetic journey is the specifically the character of Lilia, who’s controlling value seems to change with her age. In her adult life, she tells Eli,
“What I want,” [Lilia] said quietly, on the third night he spent with her, “is to stop traveling and stay in the same place for a while. I’m starting to think I’ve been traveling too much” (22).
The controlling value inferred from this statement by the character is that of the desire for stability, the need for a concrete home that will lead to development and personal growth inside herself; however, I’d like to dive back into her past as the text does itself. Lilia, on the road, young and bouncing between states, says this about a crater left behind after a nuclear blast:
The Crater showed the aftermath of an ungodly heat: the centre was purest black, the brightest black imaginable, and around the edges of this brilliant darkness was a shining ring. This is where the heat of the explosion had changed the sand to glass, and the glass reflected the sky. The same force levels cities and creates mirrors in the desert. It occurred to her that this is what being caught might be like. The white-hot flash of recognition and then her life blown open, a radioactive mirror in a wasteland, her secretive life torn asunder and scattered outward in disarray. Tears came to her eyes in the passenger seat (68).
This bit of insight from Lilia reveals the context of young Lilia’s road-trip: (-) Remaining stagnant risks being caught in the implosion of looming problems that arrive alongside the shackles of settling down and murders your freedom.
This context drives Lilia to her purpose, what she keeps on the road for: (+) Embracing your freedom to remain in motion leads to unlimited chances at redevelopment and the breaking from the bindings of the past, allowing for the journey to bliss.
We can even chart a graph of this controlling value’s controlling idea and counter idea, a concept originating in Robert Mckee’s Story.
(+) Lilia is rescued by her father in the middle of the night
(+) The two make it to the border and begin their drive through the America states
(-) A private investigator is sent after them
(-) Unsolved Cases features Lilia’s disappearance, showing her face to the nation
(-) Lilia feels guilty and calls home
(+) Simon reminds his half-sister to keep running, not to come back ever
(-) Lilia is almost caught in a motel room by the cops
(+) Lilia escapes out the back window and gets away with her father
Lilia grows older
(-) Her father settles down with his girlfriend
(+) Lilia continues to California
(+) to Colorado
(+) to Texas
(+) to Colorado again
(+) and so on
However, taking a closer look at this same insight could inadvertently hold a mirror up to this character.
“…a radioactive mirror in the wasteland, her secretive life torn asunder and scattered outward in disarray.”
What is the “mirror” revealing, and if it’s so bad, wouldn’t proper awareness of its existence be beneficial to eventually overcoming up, then perhaps an explosion wouldn’t be necessary. In the gap of year that haven’t been revealed yet to the reader as of our reading, Lilia shifts to the opposing controlling value, converting down the previous purpose for a new context: (-) Endless evasion only allows issues to fester and grow, overtaking the versions of you left behind and hindering the person you wish to become because you have no base, thus nothing to stand of, thus a you will only collapse on yourself.
This possibly drives mature Lilia to fulfill a different purpose than her childhood self: (+) Finding stability, a place to call home, allows you to safely confront your past difficulties with a supporting system of roots consisting of loved-ones, passions, and past-times to keep you sane while going through the process, thus leading you out the other side a clearer person most susceptible to happiness.
Our perspective characters fall into these opposing controlling values and seem to butt heads with each other even with the little connection they appear to have to each other, young Michaela being hundreds of miles and fifteen years apart from recently left Eli, and yet being foils to one another, one idolizing this ability to hide in travel and the other searching to cease it. They weave together, these two controlling values, but can they find a way to coexist?
Tequila Mockingbird 
Last Night in Montreal starts out by stating that Lilia has been running all of her life. This is a learned characteristic from her dad who ripped her from her home, and mother as a young girl. Lilia thinks of traveling as a good thing, just as Matt discusses in the controlling value. She has freedom to do what she wants, and believes new beginnings are all apart of her freedom to explore. From an outsiders perspective, such as Eli, this is very different. To the reader, Lilia is obviously suffering from some sort of PTSD, or has some sort of emotional trauma rooted in her that causes her to leave. The ideal audience sees Lilia’s behavior as irrational, as that is what Emily St. John Mandel is trying to convey to the reader. Someone who loves traveling and is similar to Lilia in their everyday life may actually act as the authorial audience, as they believe everything Lilia is doing is sane. This would probably be a small percent of people, as most would view constant leaving places as stemming from a place of hurt.
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Matt doesn’t awesome job of showing the positive right along with the negative. This is a working diagram of the controlling values. Each good side comes with an equally bad side. Yeah Lilia was abducted as a child, but she was really thankful for it. She was stolen away from an abusive mother. Is that good? Or is that bad? The whole story is lined with these contradictory thoughts. Yeah she’s a girl that needs to run, but at the same time she left behind a man that loved her. She’s doing what she needed to do but at the risk of hurting somebody else.
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I like the idea that Lilia’s controlling value changes with her age. It’s an angle that I didn’t necessarily “read for”, and now I’m thinking more about it. The imagery of the crater that she sees is one of the more negative points of her childhood narratively and contextually speaking, and it is evident that in her adult life the context change to become more positive.
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