What would a Myers Briggs personality profile test look
like for someone interested in spending time, or wintering over in the lexicon
of the book, in Antarctica at the South Pole Station? It seems to revolve
around where one’s affinity might lie; “would you rather be a florist or a
truck driver?”
That is the jumping off point for the first novel from
award-winning writer/journalist Ashley Shelby, South Pole Station. Shelby populates the point farthest south with
a collection of quirky, misfits; a gather of square pegs who can’t seem to
manage to fit into proverbial round holes of the so-called real world.
It is those quirks that make Shelby’s characters so
compelling, but they almost reach the point where the characters outshine the
storyline. What starts out as a great concept kind of gets a bit lost at the
books mid-way point; you end up not quite being sure if this is a slice of odd
humor, a global climate change/warming novel, a take on the Big Bang Theory, both
the TV show and the theory itself, or could it be a love story?
I must admit that I kept slogging through the book to
see if Shelby was able to pull all of these disparate storylines together to
come to a grand conclusion. To be acutely honest, I admit to being left
scratching my head. Shelby certainly displays some entertaining storytelling
abilities, so I will be intrigued as to where she goes from here with her next
slice of fiction.
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