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Late Nights on Air

By Elizabeth Hay

(10)

| Hardcover | 9780771038112

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Book Description

The eagerly anticipated novel from the bestselling author of A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs.

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, hContinue

The eagerly anticipated novel from the bestselling author of A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs.

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined.

Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre. One summer, on a canoe trip four of them make into the Arctic wilderness (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, which threatens to displace Native people from their land.

Elizabeth Hay has been compared to Annie Proulx, Alice Hoffman, and Isabel Allende, yet she is uniquely herself. With unforgettable characters, vividly evoked settings, in this new novel, Hay brings to bear her skewering intelligence into the frailties of the human heart and her ability to tell a spellbinding story. Written in gorgeous prose, laced with dark humour, Late Nights on Air is Hay’s most seductive and accomplished novel yet, and is already garnering interest abroad.

On the shortest night of the year, a golden evening without end, Dido climbed the wooden steps to Pilot’s Monument on top of the great Rock that formed the heart of old Yellowknife. In the Netherlands the light was long and gradual too, but more meadowy, more watery, or else hazier, depending on where you were. . . . Here, it was subarctic desert, virtually unpopulated, and the light was uniformly clear.

On the road below, a small man in a black beret was bending over his tripod just as her father used to bend over his tape recorder. Her father’s voice had become the wallpaper inside her skull, he’d made a home for himself there as improvised and unexpected as these little houses on the side of the Rock — houses with histories of instability, of changing from gambling den to barber shop to sheet metal shop to private home, and of being moved from one part of town to another since they had no foundations.
—From Late Nights On Air

Critics

  • LATE NIGHTS ON AIR by Elizabeth Hay

    Review by Jill I. Shtulman (DEC 22, 2010) If a heart is torn apart in the Canadian arctic and no one hears it, did it really happen? Elizabeth Hay would answer a resounding “yes.” All of her characters – a diverse group of wounded lost souls who work ... (read full critics)

    mostlyfiction published on Thu, 23 Dec 2010

  • Book review - Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

    CANADIAN WRITER ELIZABETH Hay has been justly praised for her strong yet lyrical descriptions of the Canadian countryside, her evocation of its loneliness, its treachery, and its beauty. But the reason such personalising of the landscape showcases h ... (read full critics)

    thescotsman published on Mon, 27 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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  • I own two editions of this book, unintentionally. I read the other one, but here are my comments:

    This is a lovely book, though I was a bit annoyed by the foreshadowing. I might have given it 5 out of 5 stars (certainly anyway I wouldn't have wavered over 3 vs 4 stars, it would have been a solid 4) ... (continue)

    I own two editions of this book, unintentionally. I read the other one, but here are my comments:

    This is a lovely book, though I was a bit annoyed by the foreshadowing. I might have given it 5 out of 5 stars (certainly anyway I wouldn't have wavered over 3 vs 4 stars, it would have been a solid 4) if Hay had exised every one of her "if they'd known what would happen that summer" statements. What I liked was the picture she painted of the place and the time and the people - there's a kind of precision about it, so that you feel immersed in all of it.

    Is this helpful?

    Hold Your Spin said on Feb 12, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • This is a lovely book, though I was a bit annoyed by the foreshadowing. I might have given it 5 out of 5 stars (certainly anyway I wouldn't have wavered over 3 vs 4 stars, it would have been a solid 4) if Hay had exised every one of her "if they'd known what would happen that summer" statements. Wha ... (continue)

    This is a lovely book, though I was a bit annoyed by the foreshadowing. I might have given it 5 out of 5 stars (certainly anyway I wouldn't have wavered over 3 vs 4 stars, it would have been a solid 4) if Hay had exised every one of her "if they'd known what would happen that summer" statements. What I liked was the picture she painted of the place and the time and the people - there's a kind of precision about it, so that you feel immersed in all of it.

    (I own two different editions of this book. Asked for it for Christmas two years in a row and got it both times. *headdesk*)

    Is this helpful?

    Hold Your Spin said on Feb 12, 2010 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (10)
    • 5 stars
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  • English Books
  • Hardcover 376 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 0771038119
  • ISBN-13: 9780771038112
  • Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
  • Pub date: Sep 18, 2007
  • Dimensions: 1419 mm x 968 mm x 194 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Paperback and Others
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9780771038112 Hardcover $55.01 -- The Book Depository
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