Late Nights on Air: A Novel - Softcover

Hay, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847247873 ISBN 13: 9781847247872

Publisher: MacLehose Press, 2009

Synopsis

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in Yellowknife, Northern Canada. There, 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 characters 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, 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, threatening to displace Native people from their land. 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 and laced with dark humour.

About this title

Review:

A superb portrait of unremarkable lives, and a beautiful prose poem to vast open spaces' Joanna Kavenna, Spectator. (Spectator)

The kind of emotional intelligence that marks all great literature' Lesley McDowell, Scotsman. (Scotsman)

Funny, beautifully written and altogether wonderful - The Times. (The Times)

Hay exposes the beauty simmering in the heart of harsh settings with an evocative grace that brings to mind Annie Proulx - Washington Post. (Washington Post)

This novel has it all - tales of lust and lngings and hidden pasts, combined with utterly loveable characters..Hay's intelligent style makes this a summer must-read - Woman. (Woman)

From the Back Cover:

Harry Boyd, a world-weary, washed-up television broadcaster, has returned to a small radio station in the remote reaches of the Canadian North. There, in the golden summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real Dido Paris is even more than he imagined. The following summer, four employees of the station embark upon a long canoe trip into the Barrens, a mysterious landscape of lingering ice and almost continuous light. In this wild and dynamic Arctic setting, emotional bonds are forged and broken. Balances shift, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by a controversial gas pipeline. Spare, witty, and charged with unusual life, this compelling tale embodies the power of place and of the human voice to generate love and haunt the memory.

About this edition

• Publisher: MacLehose Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1847247873
• ISBN 13: 9781847247872
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320