Giller Prize winner Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air is almost too good
So I have a problem this week. Late Nights on Air landed in my lap about three weeks ago. And it sat on my desk, waiting patiently with a tinge of desperation, like someone rendezvousing with a new lover. I no sooner start reading it than not two days later it won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Well shit! Now I have a problem. No longer is Ottawa writer Elizabeth Hay’s work merely the property of a select few, but now, with its newfound notoriety, it’ll be read at every bus stop, on every bus and in every bathroom. Like a siren’s song, the Giller seal affixed to every cover of Late Nights on Air will beguile countless shoppers this Christmas season. So anything I have to say is tainted. My comments, coming as late as they are, will be regarded as undue veneration, and my criticisms like unreasonable whinging.
Well, on with the show. Late Nights on Air is very, very, verrrry good. It’s an extremely polished piece of storytelling. The characters are alarmingly arresting, drawing you into an endless morass of charming insecurity. The plot is innocuous, but the whole thing is paced like a slow metronome, unfolding serenely, with scenes divided from each other by a chronological break. Like the ticking of a clock, its evenness fades into the background, allowing the characters to wash over the reader. Even towards the end, when the ticking starts to stretch out for years, the feeling remains elegantly constant.
It is the characters that define this story. Hay is absolutely inspired at sketching out the net of individuals that form a community – how they relate, how they change, how they constantly needle you with their endless series of everyday flaws and chinks. Particularly magnificent is her capture of the fatuousness of Dido. Though a “free spirit,” she is also the portrait of a woman so trapped by her own image that she becomes blinded to her own reality. Equally beautiful is Hay’s stunning rendition of the northern landscape of Canada – a detailed, intimate caressing of this beautiful but dangerous wilderness that looms in the imagination of even the most urbanized Canadians.
If there is one real, authentic criticism that I can make about this work it is this: In the midst of Hay’s massive talent and ability, I found myself yearning for something more – for something challenging and engaging that would literally battle me. Too often Canadian literary works are little more than repositories of melancholy psychological experiences, the grey-on-grey sadness of quirky characters. I suppose my real complaint is that writing this good always makes you long for something more – whether thematically or linguistically. If only Hay’s book had been worse, I’d have nothing to complain about.
As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – November 22, 2007
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/books/books.aspx?iIDArticle=13520
