Late Nights on Air

I really liked the setting: Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, Canada. The setting was definitely a character in this book ... like New York City is in Vivian Gornick's wonderful "Fierce Attachments." I remember when I read "Arctic Dreams" by Barry Lopez how much he talked about what a difference it made to be so far up north on the globe. It creates all kinds of differences, including cultural ones, to have "nightless summers and dayless winters." I really liked the characters in this book - clearly differentiated and interesting. I enjoyed their conversations and predicaments. Four of them go on a journey that was a mix of solitude and danger. I think you will enjoy reading this book.

Evocative setting and complex, fascinating characters topped by a thriller of a canoe trip through Canada's Barren Ground wilderness, Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights on Air was so good I had to read it twice. The second time through, I could appreciate the craft the author wields as she deftly shifts points of view, blends in flashbacks, and paints word-pictures of that land of the northern lights, Yellowknife, Northern Territories. Set in a provincial small-town radio station, the book does not neglect the Dene natives and their battle to protect a frozen but beautiful environs from a natural gas pipeline. Hay weaves all these elements into a seamless narrative. A definite buy.

I stayed up till 2 a.m. last night to finish this wonderful book which I chose because it won Canada's Giller prize, and I thought reading about ice and snow in summer in 90 degree TN might cool me off! The novel is about a cast of interesting, flawed and not-so-flawed characters, set in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, in the 1970s. They work at a radio station to or from their way to a different place in space and time. Hay uses tons of foreshadowing because she may have been afraid she might lose the reader's interest since this isn't a detective novel. Instead, it's a lovely, lovely novel that will touch all of your senses, so descriptive (without being burdensome) is the writing. I found myself picturing the scenes every spot along the path. Hay's premise may be that you have to be in the right place at the right time on your life's journey, but, still, you must keep trying as you go if you aren't. As a character says, you must jump; take the plunge. You might just land where you are supposed to be eventually. Endeavor and luck; past and present; summer and winter; spirituality and non-belief; history of the land vs. future of the pipeline, vast tundra and tiny wildflowers - this is a book of contrasts, beautiful nature writing, and an interesting cast of characters. Highly recommended and great for discussion groups.

I loved this book! The characters were real, so fully developed, and loveable despite their flaws. The setting was intriguing- I even got my atlas out and found Yellowknife and followed the canoe trip. The writing is superb! I had to make myself slow down to savor the beauty of her words: "By evening the sky was clear. The light luminous and rich. Not brilliant as in the Mediterranean( where Harry once removed a splinter from a woman's finger on the street of Sete in light that acted as a magnifying glass). Gentler. Almost autumnal. The hills didn't have light on them, they were in light, the way something is in water." Elizabeth Hay writes about the human condition and our place in the natural world in a lovely lovely way so that when I finished, I was sorry to leave the world she created.

This is a tremendous book, a moving invocation of the North and of the less-visited reaches of love. It gathers so much momentum that by mid-book you can no more stop reading than stop breathing.