Late Nights on Air

Elizabeth Hay's LATE NIGHTS ON AIR, based on her experience working for CBC Radio in Canada's far north, is a novel animated by its characters rather than its plot. Such a work of fiction asks a lot from its narrator, and Paul Hecht succeeds well in giving individual voices to the motley cast. His dry delivery is particularly well suited to Harry, the burned-out journalist, though he's less successful as Harry's love interest, the beguiling Dido Paris. (Admittedly, she would be a challenge for any narrator, given that she has a Dutch-accented voice that Hay describes as "like a tarnished silver spoon.") Despite Hecht's skills in characterization, however, his languid narration serves to further decelerate the slow pace of the novel. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

February 18, 2008
After being fired from his latest television job, a disgraced Harry Boyd returns to his radio roots in the northern Canadian town of Yellowknife as the manager of a station no one listens to, and finds himself at the center of the station's unlikely social scene. New anchor Dido Paris, both renowned and mocked for her Dutch accent, fled an affair with her husband's father, only to be torn between Harry and another man. Wild child Gwen came to learn radio production, but under Harry's tutelage finds herself the guardian of the late-night shift. And lonely Eleanor wonders if it's time to move south just as she meets an unlikely suitor. While the station members wait for Yellowknife to get its first television station and the crew embarks on a life-changing canoe expedition, the city is divided over a proposal to build a pipeline that would cut across Native lands, bringing modernization and a flood of workers, equipment and money into sacred territory. Hay's crystalline prose, keen details and sharp dialogue sculpt the isolated, hardy residents of Yellowknife, who provide a convincing backdrop as the main cast tromps through the existential woods.