Still Point is a brilliant, complex and confident first novel by young English writer Amy Sackville.  A young couple move through their day, described in a perfect third person narrative style that misses no detail:  Julia, as yet unaware of the depression into which she is slowly slipping, Simon, concerned about an affair he may or may not be approaching.  Julia is a distant relative of fictional Arctic explorer Edward Mackley, and is archiving his effects in her attic. While she sweats out her flat modern life in the heat of a bad English summer, she dreams of his cold Victorian heroism and reconstructs his tragic final voyage.  Sackville is a truly marvelous writer of fiction, able to balance two narratives a century apart without losing focus.  The first novel I’ve read in 2011, and it’s a doozy.