The Still Point

Some hours pass without event. They shift a little. The nascent day will soon begin; have patience. We are watching them in the time most often lost to us, well into the night, but before the threat of dawn. The space in time when, if we wake, we are unsure if here are hours of sleep ahead of or we will be shaken seconds later by whatever it that usually signals the day: music or the shrill beep an alarm; a persistent bird at the window; a lover; dread.

You can draw a little nearer, if you are very quiet. Put your face close to his, close enough to feel the gentle rumble and stink of his breath; feel the damp warmth of hers on your cheek. They fall asleep, as many couples do, first twined and then detached; as we rejoin them they have long since undergone this last conscious act, this delicate separation on the very brink of dreaming. (pg. 5)

Thus the reader is introduced to the first of two couples, Julia and Simon, living in Julia’s ancestral home filled to the brim with both things and echoes of the past.  Still Point, a debut novel by Amy Sackville, is about two couples and the ties that bind them together as well as the tensions that threaten to keep them apart. The second couple is Julia’s great-great-uncle, Arctic explorer Edward Mackley and his new bride Emily.

At the turn of the twentieth century Edward sets out to achieve his deepest ambition, to reach the North Pole. He leaves Emily, after their honeymoon, in the care of his brother, John and his wife in the family home. Edward vanishes, leaving Emily to wait for decades. One hundred years later, Julia is going through the family house in order to catalogue what remains from Edward’s explanations including his diary found a few decades earlier.  Still Point chronicles one day in Julia’s life, one sweltering mid-summer day in stark contrast to the cold, arctic wastelands.

In that one day, Sackville takes the reader back and forth so we learn about Julia and Simon’s somewhat strained relationship, and the story of Edward’s expedition, and most importantly, the story of Edward and Emily’s deep love. Julia’s work is difficult because of the shear weight of the family history as “The house groans in the night, freighted with memories. They are stashed in every cupboard; they lurk in every corner…” (pg. 16) and “Surfaces are crowded with keepsakes, her own, her family’s, piling up over the years so that a thick layer of memory blankets all alike. It is sometimes hard to move in a house like this.” (pg. 32)

The burden memories and the burden of legacy is at the heart of Still Point and the author is skilled in getting to the heart of Simon and Julia’s relationship, peeling away the layers like an onion. Sackville is also skilled at descriptions particularly of the Arctic landscape.

They staggered on deck with much gripping and clambered down onto the new-fallen snow, where their grumbles were slowly appeased by the beauty of the night. Every granule on the ground had its glimmer, and the sky was almost as close-packed with the powder of starlight. White on black like the shine in Edward’s eyes, as he strove to see wide and far, to see everything, longing to bring this perfection back to Emily; if he could only close a glass orb around it and carry the universe home to her. (pg. 80)

I liked how the author was able to paint a scene or give you a sense of a character with a few well chosen words or a short passage. There is a slight hint of sardonic humor underlying some of the passages adding a touch of lightness. Sackville also uses repeating images through out the novel, such as pinned butterflies or the weight of a ship moving through the ice and the pressure of the encroaching ice on the hull of that ship which gives the novel a pleasant rhythm.

Sackville chooses a quote from T.S. Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton to serve as an epigraph, “At the still point of the turning world…Where past and future are gathered.” She uses the image of a still point to capture a day in time, and she uses that day to explore the weight of memory, the burden of legacy, and the real versus the idealistic in relationships, memory versus fact in life. A worthy debut and I look forward to seeing more of this author in the future.