The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station Guide welcomes Cooper Gosling, an artist in residence, with the fact that the average annual temperature is -56.7 degrees Fahrenheit. She'd already been vetted for a grant: subjected to an exam, questioned about why she wants to paint in Antarctica, and treated to a trust-building exercise involving Tabasco and 7 Up. In Ashley Shelby's witty and affecting debut, South Pole Station, Cooper joins a group of eccentrics on the ice for a slide into the surreal.
Told from various viewpoints, the novel always circles around Cooper, who was raised, along with her brother, on tales of polar exploration. The tension, aside from extreme weather conditions and personal interactions, comes from the opposition to Pavano, a helioseismologist in the pay of big oil and global warming deniers. The scientists go out of their way to thwart him, which ultimately results in an accident involving Cooper, and the threat by several congressmen to withdraw funding.
Shelby makes serious statements about scientific quests, climate change, politics and people in extremis, but it's the "Polies" who undergird the story. With South Pole Station's satire, science, wry wit and warmth, Ashley Shelby has written one of the best novels of the year. --Marilyn Dahl