Late Nights on Air Will Keep You Up

Thanks to cramps and hormonal despair, I spent the weekend in bed alternating between listless staring into space and polishing off Elizabeth Hay's Giller award-winning novel Late Nights on Air.

I was surprised at how the novel's setting and characters entrenched themselves in my imagination. It's a serious book, reflective and ambling like a bearded academic who wears socks with his sandals.

I should not have liked this book, what with its nostalgic Canadiana (it is set in a Yellowknife CBC radio station in 1975, its characters are compelled by native causes and stirred by tales of early Arctic voyages) and yet I found myself yearning to return to its pages to discover the fate of its characters.

Hay deftly manages a rather large cast of characters, although I did occasionally find myself having to turn back pages to remind myself whose tract I was following. And while a canoe voyage reads more like a footnote than the climax, within that voyage are descriptions of northern land that I am glad to have absorbed.

After a week with this book I feel haunted not only by its striking images of the harshness and beauty of Yellowknife but occupied by its characters. They are a sad and complicated lot and Hay is able to succinctly relate their complexities without resorting to cliches.

Late Nights on Air is an affecting read for those willing to be absorbed its tales.