SOURCE: Shippey, Tom. “English Accents.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4803 (21 April 1995): 21.

In the following review, Shippey criticizes the lack of authorial focus and compelling characterizations in Still, calling the novel a “584-page rant.”

Still: it can mean an apparatus for distillation, as in Arbuthnot's Aliments (1735), “This fragrant Spirit is obtain'd from all Plants which are in the least aromatick, by a cold Still.” Or it can mean “Now … as formerly”, so Shakespeare. “Such is thy beauty still.” Its root or earliest meaning is as in “still waters run deep”, an old proverb and indeed an Old English proverb, “still waters often break the staithes”; in Beowulf, the dead dragon lies wundum stille, still from wounds. And of course it has come to mean the single frame of a film, displayed to give an idea (but only an idea, devoid of plot or narrative) of what the entire entertainment might...