How to Start a Charter Airline

Chris Knight is a copy editor at Canadian Press.

Susan Haley’s third novel walks a fine line as both a sexy comedy and
a vehicle for some serious ideas. But despite its emotional loops and
rolls, the story never loses its balance. As it opens, Helen Ayre is
living in the tiny northern village of Island Crossing, population 200.
She came there to study the inhabitants with her abusive, Ph.D.-obsessed
anthropologist husband, then stayed on when he left, supported by the
generosity of her neighbors.

Enter Max Malkovksi, a kind-hearted pilot with a crooked boss and his
own less-than-happy family history. Obviously, they’re going to fall
in love. Watching them get there is what makes this tale both funny and
fun. Although Max and Helen are in bed by page 7, the novel is hardly
steamy. Their mutual attraction helps pull the plot along, but plot
never takes a back seat and even the physical moments are more poetic
than graphic. The love affair moves at a refreshingly natural pace.

The comedic element is also nicely underplayed. As Max and Helen
struggle to make their charter airline a going concern, they cross paths
with Sam Garuluk, the plane’s owner, and Charles Fish, an idealistic
Air Transport official in Ottawa who speaks bureaucratese but tries to
be as helpful as he can, all the while mindful that he cannot
(officially at least) give them advice on how to abide by a morass of
conflicting federal rules.

Character development and dialogue are strong, although both work best
in scenes where Max and Helen are alone together. One-on-one, the
interplay of words and emotions is seamless; in a crowd, Haley’s
characters either dominate the action or fade out altogether. The only
other problem is the book’s conclusion, which seems both tacked-on and
too tidy given the rough path the characters have already traveled.
Overall, however, this is a warm novel of family endings and beginnings,
of love and loss interwoven with the stark seasonal changes of the
North. The title reads like a dry textbook—the tale is anything but.