Polar - Hardcover

Pearson, T. R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067003035X ISBN 13: 9780670030354

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2002

Synopsis

T. R. Pearson's Polar offers up, at heart, the bittersweet story of Deputy Ray Tatum's search for a missing child in the wilds of the Virginia Blue Ridge. Filtered through the eyes of a nameless, prying neighbor, this history of love and loss, of crime and punishment in a small, upland town is touched throughout by Pearson's trademark blend of extraordinary high humor and nagging melancholy.
We meet the local citizens - Ray's colleagues in the sheriff's office, his hot-head of a girlfriend, his ill-tempered, vaporish mongrel, and, most significantly, a grubby and miraculous prophet of the truly inconsequential named Clayton. As Ray unravels the mystery of Clayton's condition and thereby closes in on his quarry, Pearson treats us to a lively perspective on rural American life (a marriage of diluted Old Testament values and cable-news-network misinformation) that is both wickedly corrosive and cracklingly funny.

About this title

About the Author

T. R. Pearson is the author of eight novels, including Blue Ridge, the ever-popular A Short History of a Small Place, and Cry Me a River.

Reviews

Acclaimed for his idiosyncratic prose and picaresque colloquialisms and his irreverent but brilliantly insightful portrayals of the smalltown denizens of backwater North Carolina and Virginia Pearson revisits sad but savvy deputy sheriff Ray Tatum and Kit Carson, his off-again, on-again African-American park ranger girlfriend from his seventh novel, Blue Ridge. Wildly and delightfully digressive, the yarn is narrated in the omniscient voice of the collective townsfolk in Pearson's signature run-on gnarly sentences. Possessing the annoying habit of regaling locals and strangers alike with the plots of the latest porno flicks beamed in on his TV satellite dish, Clayton, the town recluse, undergoes a sudden personality change at the checkout counter of the local grocery mart and adopts the name Titus. Retiring to his rundown residence, he begins to sketch an outline of Antarctica on his fireplace chimney and demonstrates surprising abilities as a seer after ostensibly foretelling the death of a pet pooch. After the toddler daughter of a transplanted Ohio lawyer vanishes into thin air, the citizenry seek the help of the newfound prophet, but to no avail. A veterinarian couple who like to indulge in sex smeared with wallpaper paste, a llama crossbred with wild deer, a slicker running a septic-tank scam, a clan of ne'er-do-wells operating a produce stand with fruit stolen from nearby orchards, and enough oddballs to cast a Coen brothers' film enliven the road to denouement. Aptly compared to Faulkner and Mark Twain, Pearson always focuses his satire on some aspect of our national character; here, it's what he sees as our hypocritical attitude toward porn. As usual, a subtle sadness counterpoints his marvelously whimsical meanderings, giving substance to this wholly enjoyable tale. 5-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Pearson, master of digression, the periodic sentence, and the 50-cent word in an Appalachian setting, returns with the tale of a missing child and a backwoods seer nothing like Sharyn McCrumb's Nora Bonesteel (The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter). The seer is former porno movie maven Clayton, who is transformed in a grocery-store check-out line into a dispenser of cryptic, useless, but accurate prophecy and a sort of "channel" for a long-dead polar explorer, Titus Oates. The missing girl? Well, her father finds himself an odd suicide, her mother finds herself a right-wing radio/TV phenomenon, and Deputy Ray Tatum (see also Pearson's Blue Ridge) finds the girl, years later. Oh yeah, lots more happens, too. Potentially interesting characters like Ray's black kung-fu girlfriend Kit Carson are two-dimensional, but Ray, Clayton, and "that Dunn woman" come alive. In any case, Pearson's work isn't really about character but language, lore, and local color. For larger collections, but essential where literary weirdness is appreciated. Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* No one knows Clayton's last name. In fact, even in gossipy rural Virginia, no one wants to know. He's simply the white trash from out past the quarry whose satellite dish is always aimed at the porn channel; when Clayton leaves his TV to buy beer, he regales anyone in the convenience store with blow-by-blow descriptions of his favorite films. On one such beer run, though, he appears transformed--serene, polite, and wanting to be known as Titus. Some witnesses swear the store's bar-code scanner inadvertently rewired his circuits. But as weeks and months pass, Titus begins to utter cryptic phrases that suggest precognition, and he becomes Deputy Sheriff Ray Tatum's lone hope for finding a missing child. But however engaging the plot, it's the characters, the narrative voice, and the meandering stories within stories that make this latest Pearson novel--indeed, each of his eight novels--very special. Pearson peoples this tale with a baker's dozen of ne'er-do-well families: Meechams, Bodines, Wootens, and Quisenberrys, among them. As a lowlife member of each family appears, he or she occasions a loopy story that is at once laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely poignant. In attempting to capture the essence of Pearson's work, many reviewers invoke the names of William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and Flannery O'Connor. All those invocations are fair, but Pearson has created a world all his own, a place that fans of southern storytelling won't want to miss. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067003035X
• ISBN 13: 9780670030354
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243