A Review of Ashley Shelby’s “South Pole Station”
Cool Place, Uncool People
It’s summer. The weather is hot and humid (or should be for this time of year). Wanna read a book that will likely cool you down? How about reading about the coldest place on Earth, the South Pole, via Ashley Shelby’s debut novel South Pole Station. The timing couldn’t be more perfect for its publication, and not just weather-wise. With the United States pulling out of the Paris Accord, a book that touches on climate change denial is bound to be one of the present, even if the novel’s setting is during the George W. Bush administration circa 2003 and 2004.
The book is mostly, at least at the start, told through the eyes of a woman named Cooper, a visual artist who has suffered from the recent death, a suicide, of her twin brother, David, who also had a mental illness. To escape the pain, she volunteers to spend a year as a sort of artist-in-residence at the U.S.’s South Pole research station. When Cooper gets down there, she discovers a gaggle of scientists (called Beakers), engineers (called Nailheads) and people just like her who are all about as unhip as you can get from the middle-of-the-road. However, the entire environment is thrown into upheaval when a climate change denier is sent to do research at the Pole. With everyone against him, the denier is forced to find workarounds for his research, which may have a disastrous effect on at least one individual, if not the whole contingent at the Pole.
South Pole Station is a mostly humourous book, though, climate change seriousness aside. The humour, though, is about as dry as the Antarctic landscape — meaning that you have to have something of a scientist’s wit to really enjoy this read. I also found that the book, which is long enough to have a good day’s worth of curling up with, is rather uneventful (read: boring) for the first half or so, until there’s a lurching shift into high drama.
While most of the narrative is told from Cooper’s viewpoint, which is apropos because she’s a first-timer at the Pole and this means that we see the Pole through the eyes of such a person, much like ourselves, who has never been there, the POV shifts from time-to-time. This is to bring various plot points into greater clarity, as the history of how things turn out are beyond the limited viewpoint of Cooper. However, the effect is rather jarring. And, by novel’s end, it’s not clear whether or not you can consider Cooper the true protagonist or hero of the tale. After all, for most of the novel, she is incapable of producing art beyond the odd sketches of mittens. (Har de har har. There’s that dry humor at work.)
I found the novel did improve once the climate change denier comes onto the scene. This gives the Polies (as they’re called) an enemy to rally around. And it also produces a sobering treatise on whether or not one is a true scientist if they’ve been paid off by lobbyists and have certain religious beliefs. This is one aspect of the book that I found grating, as a Christian, for not all Christians are right-wing nutjobs who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old.
As you can tell, I found some pain points with the novel. That said, this book is not all bad. In fact, it’s rather peculiarly charming and the subject matter of itself is somewhat interesting. I actually had no idea what kind of research, if any, was happening at the South Pole — so this book illuminates the sort of stuff going on down there. I wish my galley copy had the map of the station that real, live copies of the book would have (mine was marked “to come”) because I found myself getting lost in the mazelike world of the research station. It became hard for me to know just where particular landmarks were located, but here I go talking about the negatives again.
I recognize that South Pole Station is well-written. It was grafted from a number of short stories, and the seams don’t really show all that much. The vast majority of the plot points are essentially resolved by the novel’s end, and there’s something to be said about the impossibility of creating vastness in art when you’re stuck in a place that provides very little in the way of inspiration or imagination. Still, even though the author acknowledges in the acknowledgements that there’s a vast library of stuff in terms of South Pole or Antarctica writing, it seems likely that many readers won’t go searching it out on their own unless they have a reason to.
For that reason, and assuming that South Pole Station gets prominence on bookstore and library shelves, readers wouldn’t go wrong in discovering this book. I find it easy to be a bit critical of the work, but that’s only because it has promise. The high drama part of the book is enthralling, as you realize that the stakes these characters are playing at are enormously high. Still, I was a bit perturbed that Cooper’s character gradually disintegrates into the backdrop. There was something more to be said about her personal journey of healing, but I did feel as though Shelby just glanced over it.
Still, for all of its faults (and, as you can see, there are quite a few if you go thinking about them), South Pole Station is an enjoyable summer read. As noted, it’s the sort of thing you may want to read as the weather is warm and you’re on a sandy beach somewhere with the sun beating down. Fans of quirky, sophisticated humour will probably likely enjoy this more — having a degree in science may help you to enjoy it, too, as the jargon-y part of the book really opens up in its back half. I hope I haven’t sounded too critical as to be off-putting, but South Pole Station is likable enough. It could have been something more, whatever that more is, but what we have here should be good enough for readers seeking to be challenged by their world view. It may be the polar opposite (har de har) of what you currently believe, and that alone makes South Pole Station worth picking up.
Ashley Shelby’s South Pole Station will be published by Picador on July 4, 2017. Buy it Here
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