Polar

Rating:
Summary: Decisively Wicked And Perceptive
Review: A lost child is certainly not a topic that would normally be considered for satire. T. R. Pearson uses the event and the actions that follow for observations that are scathing in their commentary on human nature that will be all too familiar. When you are done with this story you may well agree the child who wandered off made the correct choice.

The spectacle that is made of a child presumed missing is often a circus that the media dominates. The familiar collection of flowers and sentiment that mark a spot of interest, in this case, is constructed initially of flowers and bouquets stolen from a cemetery. The parents of the missing child are certainly culpable to a degree and the author makes them either pay or sell-out in manners so absurd that if they appeared on television tomorrow, the events would appear common.

The local seer who transforms from a twenty-four hour a day Satin Channel adult film junkie in to a predictor of events is as well done as it is searing. Predicting events that are of no consequence with ease and repetition this Virginia savant is useless when it comes to any issue of importance.

This is the first time I have read this author and he is definitely an original.

Rating:
Summary: Polar is a slice of life
Review: In Polar, Deputy Ray Tatum has two mysteries to solve: the disappearance of Angela Dunn, a wordless child who wanders into the woods, never to be seen again by her parents, and the sudden prophetic powers of the formerly worthless Clayton, a shiftless town institution best known for his preference for the porn channel. One mystery will be solved, while the other remains tantalizingly out of reach.

But these strong narrative engines are not what really drives Polar, T. R. Pearson's latest novel. What Pearson seeks to do, instead, is capture the feel of small town life and the myriad personalities that give it texture, without resorting to the usual platitudes that pretend such towns have more than their share of unspoiled innocence. In other words, Pearson's small-town Virginia is no Mayberry. Nor is it inhabited by the Cleavers.

The novelist thinks nothing of interrupting the flow of his narrative to give the life story of a minor character who may never appear in the book again. This doesn't constitute an aesthetic flaw. After all, the true, unvarnished motivations of man are what Polar is really all about.

It's about characters like Ivy Vaughn, a woman who remains in such a high dudgeon she never pays attention to the road and leaves a trail of dead animals in her wake. It's also about Mrs. Dunn, who turns the loss of her daughter and husband into profit, launching a career as a radio celebrity whose collective losses make her an authority on flagging American morals.

And, of course, there is Clayton, whose television satellite is arced over his garage at an angle that betrays, for all to observe, his addiction to televised erotica. Clayton seems an unlikely candidate to be blessed with the gift of second sight. But fate, which has a definite sense of humor in a T.R. Pearson novel, chooses Clayton to become a small-time, small-town prophet.

Only Deputy Tatum is able to turn Clayton's obscure prognostications to good purpose in his search for Angela. Motivated by the haunting memory of his own dead child, Ray pursues Angela's story long after the media, the FBI and even the girl's parents have given her up for lost. Using the prism of Tatum's grief, Pearson critiques small-town pretensions and, by extension, America's chronic hypocrisies.

Rating:
Summary: Pearson does it again
Review: Known for his poignant and humorous social satire of the rural South and his rolling, colorful, meandering sentences, Pearson has often been compared to Twain and Faulkner. But he's his own man as he proves once again in "Polar," the story of Deputy Ray Tatum's (last seen in "Blue Ridge") search for a missing child. The novel begins with one man's mysterious transformation from slug to seer and proceeds through the odd and ornery collection of people that make up this small upland town in Virginia's Blue Ridge.

As is his usual habit, Clayton, the beer swilling slob, is passing his time in line at the local grocery mart regaling his captive audience with the particulars of last night's porno film, which "never seemed to work on Clayton in quite the way they were meant to as he was prone to get caught up in the stories". Suddenly, dumping his purchases before the cashier, Tiffany, ("saddled with a comprehensive ignorance of produce that qualifies her for duty in the express lane") Clayton ceases to be himself. " 'Please, sir, do call me Titus,' he said to Tiffany. 'Everyone does these days.' "

Clayton walks off without his change, which is strange enough, but then Ray Tatum notices Clayton's satellite dish is no longer pointed to the porno channel, stops to check on him and finds him babbling nonsensically. Until, that is, Ray touches his shoulder and Clayton makes a cryptic pronouncement about the missing little girl that almost everyone but Ray has given up on.

The child, Angela Denise, is the 3-year-old daughter of the book's most charmless character, Gloria Dunn, a self-absorbed Dayton, Ohio, sophisticate with a hapless would-be farmer husband. Gloria's disdain for all things rural and her instant celebrity after her daughter's disappearance catapult her into great success as a vitriolic talk-show host.

Long after the public has forgotten and Gloria Dunn has moved on, Ray continues to search. He's a quiet, melancholy, sensible man, haunted by the accidental death of his own small daughter and chiefly interesting to the town for his outspoken African-American girlfriend, Kit. Though he gets frustratingly little from Clayton, Ray continues to look in, ask about the child and, with his girlfriend's help, poke at the mystery of Clayton's transformation.

Meanwhile, Clayton's reputation grows when his new clairvoyance predicts a dog's demise - though only in retrospect. Citizens flock to his door with their questions and Clayton will often supply them with a nonsense phrase or two, which, more often than not, turn out - in hindsight - to be remarkably accurate predictions.

While Ray goes about his policing work, and drops in on Clayton to collect stray crumbs of cryptic information and view the progress of the image Clayton sporadically sketches on his chimney, a larger picture begins to emerge. It encompasses in serendipitous fashion the teenagers who grapple on lover's lane, the conscience-wracked husband on the verge of adultery and fatherhood, the septic tank con-man, the opinionated librarian and many, many more; full-blooded characters with quirks, foibles and plenty of relatives. Like Russell, the phone man, who carries around a kidney stone and shares the fabulous Clayton-inspired tale of its discharge with all and sundry until at last silenced by dire threats from Ray. "It seems Ray had scolded Russell into something like a vampire's ethics and standards in that Russell could say what he wished about his stone only once invited to speak."

Pearson's language and his unblinkered affection for all but the most depraved of his characters drives the story. The plot is well-developed and admirably resolved but it's Pearson's style and characters that bring his readers back.

Rating:
Summary: read this guy
Review: Lynn Hamilton has written a wonderful review of T. R Pearson's POLAR, something that gives us all an idea of what the book is about. What the book is about is not why I read this guy, though. I've read all of Pearson's books, and I look forward to a kind of roller coaster ride. The ride is part plot always, but the big part is riding Pearson's prose. For me, that prose is the greatest joy, and this writer is a master of sentences and paragraphs. What more can a reader ask for? If you have not read T. R. Pearson, it's high time you did.

Rating:
Summary: Another history of a small place...
Review: On the surface this is a kind of mystery/disappearance/whodunit kind of book. But folks that's the surface. On every other level it is a wonderful but eccentric biography of a place, a small town somewhere in the Blue Ridge, and what it feels like to live there...the humorous eccentrics, the odd kind of loneliness and loss the landscape evokes, the fundamental decency of most folks (including the eccentrics) and the threatening shallowness of strangers from outside.

The place, the characters, and the feelings all point in the same direction. I like that! If you prefer straightforward thrillers this will be new to you, but give it a try. If you prefer your local-color novels to be relatively plotless, this will be far too interesting for your tastes!

Rating:
Summary: An Amusing Tale
Review: Polar is the story of a small, southern town and its off-the-wall inhabitants. The novel primarily concerns Clayton, ... suddenly calls himself Titus and begins to have strange prominitions and to act strange, and Ray, the deputy sheriff in town, likable in an almost goofy way. Tay realizes the power of Titus' premonitions and believes tha they may help in his search for a missing young girl. The story is told in a very funny manner--as if one nosy gossip (our nameless narrator) is recounting the events to another nosy gossip from a neighboring town. Polar if a very funny, very interesting novel told with a truly unique voice.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK, GREAT WRITER
Review: T. R. Pearson writes comedy. He is one of the best, arguably THE best, such writer currently working. "Polar" is one of his best books, written in the "stripped-down" (for Pearson, that is) style the writer adopted after his first masterpieces: "A Short History of a Small Place, "Off For the Sweet Hereafter," "The Last of How It Was," "Gospel Hour" and "Call and Response."

It's probably a good idea to start with the later books first (like "Polar"). They are easier to slide into. But after gaining that experience, PLEASE DO NOT neglect to go back and read the aforementioned early gems. You will no doubt want to do just that, even HAVE to. The current T.R. Pearson is a great artist, one of our best writers, but his earlier style is a truly beautiful thing to behold.

Rating:
Summary: Irreverent and irresistible!
Review: T.R Pearson is a great author! He is both irreverent and irresistible! He captures the wit and wisdom of the true South with his exquisite satire and stunning colloquialisms. What happens when you put together a small town deputy, a child that vanishes and a "white-trash" porno addicted man who becomes an oracle of misplaced information and advice? It is nothing that you may imagine! Pearson takes you on an unbelievable jourrney that is both funny and heart touching, about life in a small Southern town, dysfunctional families and a search for innocence in a wonderful style all his own with an ending that will take you by surprise.

Rating:
Summary: Pearson- irreverent and irresistible!!!
Review: T.R Pearson is a great author! He is both irreverent and irresistible! He captures the wit and wisdom of the true South with his exquisite satire and stunning colloquialisms. What happens when you put together a small town deputy, a child that vanishes and a "white-trash" porno addicted man who becomes an oracle of misplaced information and advice? It is nothing that you may imagine! Pearson takes you on an unbelievable wild ride of a story that is both funny and heart touching about life in a small Southern town, dysfunctional families and a search for innocence in a wonderful style all his own with an ending that will take you by surprise.