Sky Waves

Item Detail

1. Overview
2. Online Book Review

• Overview

  Critically acclaimed novelist Michelle Butler Hallett rolls out her raucous brand of satire in this tender exploration of the human need for communication, communion, and love. Skywaves is set against the development of radio in Newfoundland and Labrador, and told in 98 non-linear but interconnected chapters. It crackles with comedy, modulates through history, and toys with a new signal-to-noise ratio. Skywaves is definitely a lively and sometimes demented “aural” culture novel. Butler Hallett worked in radio for several years and has long been haunted by the story of a cousin who crashed his plane while looking for a lost child.

• Online Book Review

  The drive of Sky Waves is fuelled by Hallett's skill as a writer. She is not afraid to take chances with genre or format. The convolutions in the plotlines are clarified by writing that is imaginative and uncluttered. She writes well about the science of radio waves. In fact, anything to do with radio, either how radio works or how it feels to work in a radio station, feels authentic. On the domestic side, there are scenes of violence, psychological descent and physical degradation that are frank and unflinching. At the same time, Hallett is often very funny.

   

  "An announcer could interrupt the Conductor in extreme situations - to inform VOIC listeners of the fall of Sauron, the Rapture, or of a moose on Kenmount Road." And a visit to VOIC by Dr. Dorinda Masterson, there to ensure that the station is fulfilling its obligations in terms of employment equity standards, is just hilarious.

   

  "Sky Waves" is Hallett's third publication, following fast on the heels of a short-story collection, "The Shadow Side of Grace" and the novel "Double-Blind." Personally, I'd like to see more short fiction from her, but I'm definitely hooked on her style.

  -Joan Sullivan, The Telegram