“No one stays forever. On the Morning of her disappearance Lilia woke early, and lay still for a moment in bed. It was the last day of October.” These three sentences, the first three of Last Night in Montreal begin to set up this feeling of the genre of the novel. Why doesn’t anyone stay? Why did this girl disappear? Why is stating something like the month even important so early on in a novel? Is it important? With all these questions emerging- we begin to notice aspects of the genre, mystery.
“Mystery novels are often called “whodunnits” because they turn the reader into a detective trying to figure out the who, what, when, and how of a particular crime. Most mysteries feature a detective or private eye solving a case as the central character.” Mystery Genre
Paragraph one begins this first mystery, who is Lilia and why or how was she abducted. Before chapter one ends more questions begin to arise. Why can’t Eli complete his work he seems so passionate about? Why did Lilia leave all her belongings behind besides a picture of her and her father?
This repetitive form continues in every character, in every chapter from start to finish.
In order for this genre to exist- we must have unanswered questions. As I left class today I looked at my friend and asked her how does no one know what is our homework for that class? We went over the homework, it’s on our sybullas, we’ve done the same type assignments for nine weeks now and I left baffled that my classmates are juniors and seniors – sitting in the same 2 hour and 45 minute class, yet they have no idea what is going on. And then I thought, isn’t almost everything a mystery. In my case, the mystery of how are my classmates almost graduating and becoming teachers. In my classmates’ point of view, what the hell is the homework and what is going on in this class. Nothing is indefinite. I parked next to Drew today and the first mystery is why is he parking in the commuter lot? We discussed our course and this novel about Lilia and her life of running. He brought up that maybe we all run from things, maybe I’m running from reading from all these books. Which got me thinking, are we living a mystery? This recurring situation of wondering the who, what, where, when, how repeats forever, until we die. Even then, after we pass our loved ones will continue to repeat this cycle of questioning. 
We are never in one place. Students move grade levels and different schools. People move to new homes or towns. (New Jersey has one of the highest rates of people who leave the state.) We leave relationships and friendships, get new cars and phones. We evolve or just simply grow up. We may not be physically moving or running but we will never be in the same place for any given amount of time. During class we had the premise of “What happens if you never stay in the same place?” On Tuesday, that seemed like a clear problem. Today, I find the problem in “What if you always stay in the same place?” Lilia was abducted by her father after he found out her mother was abusing her. She wasn’t abducted- she was saved. She wasn’t leaving and running- she was traveling and learning about life by anyone and everyone she met.
“I need to know if you’re going to leave me.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know how to stay.”
KKJM Reads 
I really enjoyed how you used real-life examples of unanswered questions throughout your post, as I thought they really helped you to make your point. I felt that repetitive form was very prominent throughout this novel, such as how each character ends up running away from life as they know it. For example, Lilia repeatedly runs away from every city she moves to and every person that she falls in love with, while Eli jumps at the chance to go find Lilia, running away from the thesis he cannot finish writing. Meanwhile, Christopher is running away from his failed marriage and strained relationship with his daughter by pursuing Lilia’s case for years, and Michaela runs away from her parents’ rejection by begging to join the circus and pursue the life they left behind. The plot of this novel is driven by the characters’ avoidance of the things that are painful to them, and it repeats throughout the novel, moving the storyline along as each person’s journey comes to an end. I think that this instance of repetitive form is very interesting and something that I hope to explore more thoroughly in my annotated bibliography later on in the semester.
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