If you like literature that transports you to exotic locales beyond the reach of commercial airlines and enables you to view hot topics from cool new angles, South Pole Station is just the ticket. It's a novel about esoteric research that clearly required a ton of research to write, yet doesn't smell of it ... Shelby's writing is pithy and funny, and her band of eccentrics are scrappy loners who are best suited to the company of other loners ... In this unusual, entertaining first novel, Ashley Shelby combines science with literature to make a clever case for scientists' and artists' shared conviction that 'the world could become known if only you looked hard enough.'
There’s a lot going on in South Pole Station, and Shelby does better with some of its themes than with others. Cooper’s attempts to come to terms with her brother’s death are surprisingly unmoving, for example, while Sal’s pursuit of a theory as to how the world came into being makes for gripping reading ... But Shelby is very good on social interactions at the end of the earth, and South Pole Station crackles with energy whenever science takes center stage. She makes Sal’s abstruse theorizing both comprehensible and exciting.
...a ramblingly entertaining first novel ... The mechanics of the central plot are best not inspected too closely, although they do yield some nicely rebellious behavior, a stint of high-stakes political jostling and a satisfying if only intermittently convincing nerd romance. More appealing for many readers — who, like Cooper, may glaze over when things get 'too science-y' — are the back stories and posturings of the ensemble cast, whose day-to-day dramas provide a vivid notion of what it’s like to live in a frigid landscape that’s dark for six months of the year.
Set in the vast yet claustrophobic reality of Antarctica, the novel’s first delight is in its vivid depiction of sub-zero life ... Shelby keeps more than a few story lines thrumming here, yet a keen eye for character and a sharp ear for smartass dialogue keeps the strands straight. She also offers up a fair amount of science.
Shelby's first novel eschews easy choices and treats interpersonal relations, grief, science, art, and political controversy with the same deft, humorous hand. Readers will find characters to love, suspect, and identify with among Cooper's fellow Polies and won't forget them easily. A good match for readers whose interest in Antarctica was sparked by Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette, those who enjoy stories about quirky individuals and made families, and extreme armchair travelers.
This is a fascinating novel, loaded with interesting history of Antarctic exploration, current scientific operations, and the living and working conditions of those folks brave enough to endure six months of darkness and six months of daylight.
...[a] smart and inventive first novel ... She writes well about science and the peculiar, pressurized human ecosystem at the bottom of the world. Bozer, a polar station construction chief, gets his own point-of-view chapter, and it lifts him from caricature to one of the best aspects of the book ... Jokes lubricate a moving and occasionally preposterous story of love and death in the Antarctic cold.
