Elizabeth Hay

While I couldn't find the original quote that describes my issues with this book, I did come across a quote by Tom Perrotta that comes close: "...the idea that literary fiction should work the way that popular fiction works, in terms of being a pleasure to read, with a story that moves swiftly."
Late Nights is a series of disjointed vignettes, rather than a story, in which we are told how people feel rather than being shown how and why. There is too much remembering of past events that are don't really carry the story line since none of the characters has any shared past. For example, "Not brilliant as in the Mediterranean (where Harry once removed a splinter from a woman's finger..." (p. 281). What an irrelevant non sequitur.
Hay is heavyhanded about letting us know that something is going to happen. I didn't mark the first instance, but when I came to the 2nd I started keeping track: "There would be a later letter, too (181)", ""This was the winter... that Gwen would remember in part for the three unlucky things that happened...at beginning of chapter telling the 2nd thing (216)", "Aircraft...would have spotted them easily, which was the point and became the point (252)", "It should have occurred to them what lay ahead... (252)", "...what would be the first in a series of shocks ending in something far worse (254)", "This pattern...wouldn't register in all its significance until it was too late (272)", "A wolf...A harbinger, had they but known (292)", "This was one such moment and soon there would be another (345)". Even the more explicit hints don't always pan out to effective drama. for example, (what I think was the first foreboding) we are told they would regret not electing a leader for the trip, but there was no major consequence of not having done so. Similarly, Hay frequently alludes to Harry's probable loss of his job, but when it finally happens, he goes on with his life, making some changes but not falling apart.
Really, I expected there to be more use of the radio station as story line. That setting seemed to be incidental to the tale of obsession, hangups, and relationships.
In her favor, Hay does create nice images, sometimes. A few I noted ended up including the quote on the back cover, describing air. A couple more were good images of camping: "They lay across the floor... like 4 slumbering sardines" and the tent "which sagged like a soft berry picked by the weather and manhandled between its fingers" (both p 284). One I felt I could, at times, identiy with was "He felt attuned not to the God within but to the uncertainty within" (p. 306)
I did like how Gwen blossomed in her new career, learning to add sound effects, edit tape, do in depth interviews. But that is the only memorable characterization.
I felt the ending was too pat. Hay had to jump over 11 years, with a quick summary, in order to give us some kind of "happily ever after". It didn't follow with the rest of the book, we were given no hint of how people grew and changed--in fact it really depended on 1 person dropping an obsession in a way that didn't require any personal growth.
A quibble (and my review becomes as disjointed as the novel): Harry's thoughts on Hornby (an explorer who starved to death along with his 2 companions) "...the way death spared him from having to live with the consequences." (p. 230). What could be more consequential than poor planning leading to running out of food and consequently starving to death?
2011 review… (meer)

Canadian Elizabeth Hay's latest, SNOW ROAD STATION (2023), revisits the characters from her earlier novel, HIS WHOLE LIFE (2015), this time spotlighting Lulu Blake, a never-married, aging actress whose minor star is fading and who is facing a crisis of confidence in her stage career. So she retreats from Ottawa to the tiny (title) Ontario village of her youth to reunite with her friend, Nan and Nan's two adult sons, Blake and Jim, and also her brother Guy, who runs a large sugar bush, making and bottling maple syrup. During her sojourn there, she attends Blake's wedding (the bride is pregnant), not a very happy event, especially after an ugly encounter with Nan's ex-husband, who offers Lulu a ride and then assaults her. But then there is Hugh, a gentle, transplanted Californian handyman who tunes pianos, and a mutually satisfactory relationship ensues. Set in 2008, during the world financial meltdown, which barely affects these characters, as they gradually settle into a kind of peaceful truce, family secrets revealed and forgiven, as they coalesce around Blake and Bethany's new baby - parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Filled with beautiful descriptions of the changing of the seasons and the harvesting and processing of the sap into syrup, there is a kind of soothing peacefulness here, a sense of both an ending and a beginning. I loved this (mostly) gentle story. But, full disclosure, I've loved everything she's written. Older folks will especially love this one. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (meer)