Late Nights on Air.

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

Elizabeth Hay has only been publishing novels since 2000, but already she has earned a reputation as one of this country’s finest writers. Her first novel, A Student of Weather (2000), was a finalist for the Giller Prize, the Ottawa Book Award, and the Pearson Canada’s Choice Award. Her next novel, Garbo Laughs (2003), was nominated for the Governor General’s Award and won the Ottawa Book Award. Late Nights on Air, her most recent novel, won the Giller Prize in 2007 and the Ottawa Book Award and the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year in 2008. During the 1970s, Hay was a broadcaster with CBC Radio in Yellowknife, and she drew on those experiences when crafting this latest work.

Late Nights on Air centres on the lost souls who find themselves in Yellowknife during the summer of 1975. The Far North is often a destination for people in search of an answer, and the radio station in Yellowknife attracts its fair share. Dido Paris, as mythically enchanting as her name, captivates her late-night audience with her silky, alluring voice. Elevated to a near-goddess status, Dido displaces the other novice news reader, the halting and awkward Gwen Symon. Displacement, longing, and searching are, in fact, themes for all the central characters in this novel. They battle over the power dynamics associated with the incoming Mackenzie pipeline, struggle over issues of racial equality, and, in an attempt to externalize their inner journeys, retrace the steps of the explorer John Hornby, who died while charting the tundra.

Hay writes lovingly of the North, of its isolation, its barrenness, and its stark beauty, all of which mirror the interior landscapes of the novel’s characters. Hay, in fact, shows remarkable talent at interweaving the characters with their landscape, and writes her story with true poetic eloquence.