Last night the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's richest literary award, was presented to Elizabeth Hay for her novel Late Nights on Air. I just finished this book last week and I loved it. It's set in Yellowknife during the early seventies and paints an evocative picture of the time and the spirit that still exists to some extent in the Yellowknife of today. It was the time of the Berger Pipeline Inquiry and just before a television station was built in Yellowknife, bringing the rest of the world closer to the remote communities of the North. The novel is peopled with all sorts of misfits and runaways, each with his or her own reason for choosing to come North. There is romance, humour and tragedy-- just like life.
Hey, don't take my word for it. Read it for yourself.
It was the only one of the shortlisted nominees that I did read although they all sounded interesting. Maybe I'll get to them someday (after the last Harry Potter, books 2 through 5 of Anthony Bidulka's Russell Quant mysteries, James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, and other books I have bought but not yet read, not to mention all the interesting books that seem to arrive on a daily basis at the library).
MADLibrarian
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