The Globe and Mail review of Late Nights on Air

The Arctic is hot, but I doubt that is why accomplished Canadian novelist Elizabeth Hay wrote a novel set in Yellowknife and the Barrens in the mid-1970s. In Late Nights on Air, Hay has returned to a city and landscape she knew in the 1970s. Returned in her...

La Presse review (in French) of La nuit sur les ondes

Elizabeth Hay décrit avec passion la majesté de ce paysage vierge du bout du monde, la beauté de la végétation et, en digne femme de radio, les sons de la toundra, comme celui des caribous, “le cliquetis de leurs sabots, les ahanements de leur nage et le bruit...

The New York Times review of Late Nights on Air

According to Harry Boyd, one of the main characters in Elizabeth Hay’s new novel, radio is like poetry and television is like a blockbuster novel. A radio program, Harry continues, is “about one person learning something interesting and telling it to somebody else. In...

Quill & Quire review of Late Nights on Air

Some writers are known more for their affectations than their output. They busy themselves grooming a persona, or perhaps a sartorial signifier (knotted scarf, horn-rimmed glasses) to flag their idiosyncratic nature. They hold up the wall at a neighbourhood dive,...

Pickle Me This review of Late Nights on Air

So often, unsurprisingly, we find ourselves employing metaphors of artistry when it comes to a well-crafted book. Writers “weave” narratives, “paint” images, and, yes “craft” at all. Similarly, I recently wrote about a book’s...

The Bookbag review of Late Nights on Air

It was the beginning of June, the start of the long, golden summer of 1975 when northern light held that little radio station in the large palm of its hand. This isn’t quite the opening sentence of Late Nights on Air but it does make the first page. For those of...