Late Nights on Air Audiobook By Elizabeth Hay cover art

Late Nights on Air

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The Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novel from Elizabeth Hay.

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, 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, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, 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 (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who, along with his small party, starved to death in the barrens in 1927), 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, which threatens to displace Native people from their land.

With unforgettable characters, vividly evoked settings, in this award–winning novel, 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, laced with dark humour, Late Nights on Air is Hay’s most seductive and accomplished novel yet. Literary Fiction World Literature Fiction Genre Fiction Heartfelt Historical Fiction Witty

Critic reviews

#1 National Bestseller

"Elizabeth Hay has created her own niche in Canadian fiction by fastening her intelligence on the real stuff—the bumps and glories in love, kinship, friendship." —Toronto Star

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

"Dazzling. . . . A flawlessly crafted and timeless story, masterfully told." —Jury citation, the Scotiabank Giller Prize

"Exquisite. . . . Hay creates enormous spaces with few words, and makes the reader party to the journey, listening, marvelling. . . ." —Globe and Mail

"This is Hay's best novel yet." —Marni Jackson, The Walrus

"Invites comparison with work by Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. Outside Canada, one thinks of A.S. Byatt or Annie Proulx." —Times Literary Supplement

"Written by a master storyteller." —Winnipeg Free Press

"Psychologically astute, richly rendered and deftly paced. It's a pleasure from start to finish." —Toronto Star
All stars
Most relevant
This audio experience is like listening to a poem. Beautiful but sad.
It is an interesting story about radio and the north.
But the story, the characters and the narration is melancholy.
Just saying.

Melancholy

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