“Late Nights on Air”, by Elizabeth Hay

Hay, Elizabeth. Late Nights on Air. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008. Print.

Unlike The Help, this is one where I’m coming late to the party.  It won the Giller Prize in 2007, which I think is when it came to prominence and everyone was reading it.  Often “everyone’s reading it” is enough to turn me off a book, and I’ll stubbornly wait until some later time.

Fortunately the time came for this book.  I think I just got sick of seeing it at the top of my LibraryThing recommendations, and I needed a novel to read, so I let my hold on it go active.  Predictably enough, once starting it I finished it in a couple of days.

I was pleasantly surprised partly because I’d read one of Hay’s later books, Alone in the Classroom, in May of this year (I see now that I missed reviewing that book.)  It was good but ultimately not very satisfying. I enjoyed Late Nights on Air much more.

It’s no mystery to me that I liked it partly because it was set in Yellowknife, but for some reason I also liked the fact that it was set in 1975.  Nothing seems quite so un-glamourous as 1975, especially any part of Canada in 1975.  But it was an enjoyable angle without having polyester suits mentioned at every turn.  Recommended.