Antarctic Expeditions Equal Possession?

Going by the back cover, Polar isn't the first book T.R. Pearson's written featuring Ray Tatum. I wonder if the others are this unusual. The book is set in rural, upland Virginia, and at least partially revolves around Tatum's years-long search for a missing child. The young girl frequently explored the woods behind her family's farm, and vanished.

Added to this is Clayton, a fellow who spends most of his time in his house, watching the "Satin Channel", which sounds like Playboy, basically. When he's not watching that, he's regaling anyone he can grab hold of with the intricacies of the plots of the movies, while being extremely descriptive, and completely oblivious to any offense he might be causing. That last characteristic seems shared by most of the people in the community, from and old lady who seems to run over damn near anything in her Crown Vic (yet insists she's fine to be driving), to the family that sneaks on their neighbor's peach farm, and steals as many peaches as they can, then sit in their yard and sell them, without a concern in the world.

As the story begins, Clayton's in the supermarket, describing one of the movies, when he suddenly goes still, and then insists his name is Titus. He pays for his groceries, heads quietly home, and from then on, ignores his TV, choosing to either sit quietly in his chair, getting up occasionally to sketch something on the plaster above his fireplace. Tatum's girlfriend identifies the drawing as Antarctica. See, somehow, Clayton has been possessed by the spirit of a fellow named Titus who was part of an expedition to reach the South Pole, only some Norwegians beat them there. Most of the expedition died in their tents, but Titus wandered off into a storm. Yeah. Oh, and this has given Clayton/Titus some sort of predictive ability. It's vague, only works if he makes physical contact, and makes no sense until after the event has happened, but it's there.

That's what leads into the missing child, though she'd been gone for at least a year already by then. Pearson starts in their present, jumps back some distance into the past, then works forward, sometimes flashing back, then eventually proceeds beyond the place the book started. Which makes it a tad difficult to keep track of when things are happening in relation to one another. Anyway, Tatum touches Clayton/Titus' shoulder, worried about him, and the fellow says 'It's Melissa now. Sometimes Missy. Never Angela. Never Denise.' The last two being the names the missing girl went by. It's all a rather strange way of getting around to the point, which isn't held for long, since Pearson frequently diverges into anecdotes about the various folks who come to Clayton/Titus for information. The anecdotes largely serve to make every person who lives in the area seem a lout, or outright scumbag. They're all stealing from each other, cheating on each other, lying to each other, killing pets just because, whatever. It left me with the impression a meteor strike in the area would be a vast improvement.

Setting aside the randomness of Pearson having a character possessed by the spirit of an Antarctic explorer to provide visions of limited use, that brief statement really only serves as a way to introduce us to the quest Tatum is on. It wasn't as though Tatum had stopped looking, the unknown storyteller informs us he still goes out to the park and searches. His problem was lack of leads, and Titus didn't actually provide one, except perhaps to confirm Ray's suspicion she was still alive. It feels unnecessary, from a plot standpoint.

I've been trying to decide if Pearson is drawing parallels between Titus and his failed expedition and Ray and his search for the little girl. I can't see it myself, and even if that's the case, why all the other premonitions? It's not as though they uniformly help the other folks. Sometimes people make the right decision (as in, don't cheat on your wife), and sometimes they don't (let's pump my girlfriend's new car full of sewage!) That could be a point about the nature of people, and how, when things are unclear, their true nature asserts itself. So some people do the right thing, some don't, some persevere, others surrender. Maybe the connection between Ray and Titus is the importance of finding something positive to hold onto. Titus lost all hope when he couldn't be first to the South Pole. Ray finds the girl, but, for various reasons, there's no one to return her to. So Ray needed to find something else. Or maybe just finding her was enough, but if that's the case, I really don't see a parallel between he and Titus, because Ray wasn't competing with anyone to achieve his goal.

Overall, it's a strange book, sometimes hilarious, sometimes irritating, as the narrator will opine about the state of celebrity and such, and while they're probably right, it doesn't have much utility to the story. It becomes another divergence, or at most, another example of how lousy a person Denise/Angela/Missy/Melissa's mother is, as she's the sort who uses tragedy to grab herself some spotlight, and move up in the world. After a certain point, I didn't need anymore examples, especially because it telegraphs the end of the book so clearly. I can't decide whether I liked it or not. If you're a fast reader, you can blow through this quickly, and it might be worth your time (if not, the odds are you quickly figured that out, and wouldn't have wasted much time). If you tend to take a long time to read books (it's a shade under 250 pages if that helps), I'd advise giving it a pass, as I think you'd feel your time was ill-spent.