Stephen Jenkinson’s newest book: Trembling, Still is now available
The hard truth of publishing: you’ve probably heard of a book because of something someone else said or wrote about it.
The next hard truth: what people write about new books in particular comes to us mostly through the filter, or the pipeline, or the gullet, of Amazon, and of Goodreads.
The third hard truth: bookstores matter.
Please consider getting behind Trembling, Still, and letting people know about it – especially the afflicted and those who care for them – by ordering it from a bookstore and reviewing it candidly, honestly, on one of the platforms above.
Here’s an example of a favourable review:
From S.G. on Amazon:
“Stephen Jenkinson’s newest book, Trembling, Still, is unlike any book I’ve encountered on illness. His linguistic brilliance, joined now by his own confrontation with Parkinson’s disease, pulls back the curtain on what it means to live inside a body that is quietly, relentlessly changing. He gives language to what so many struggle to express: the upheaval of our carefully made plans, the changing relationship with our own body, the loss of freedom, the shock and grief of no longer being able to do simple things, and the sorrow that accompanies each small surrender.
His reflections cracked my heart wide open.
For decades, Stephen has been a trusted guide to mortality, first through his work with the dying and later as one of our most original cultural philosophers. Now he turns that same fearless attention toward himself. The result is not a memoir of disease as much as an act of astonishing generosity. He offers us not conclusions but companionship, allowing us to witness, without self-pity or sentimentality, what it is to live honestly in the presence of diminishment.
I chose to listen rather than read Trembling, Still, and I’m grateful I did. His voice is part of the experience. It has the richness of caramel and the precision of someone who has spent a lifetime mastering an instrument. In his case, the instrument is language itself. His voice is truthful, gentle, audacious, and beautifully measured, carrying every sentence with quiet authority and deep humanity.
Stephen Jenkinson does not write for the hurried reader. His vocabulary is rich, his sentences intricate, and his thoughts ask to be lingered over rather than consumed. At first, I found myself having to build the stamina for his language, much as a runner trains for a marathon. But somewhere along the way, what first felt demanding became deeply rewarding. His cadence became familiar, his language opened, and reaching the end of a passage brought the same quiet satisfaction as crossing a finish line—not because it was difficult for difficulty’s sake, but because it had carried me somewhere worth going.
For those who have followed Stephen Jenkinson over the years, this book is both heartbreaking and essential. We have long asked him to accompany others through their final passages. Now he invites us to accompany him through his encounter with the “beast” as he terms it, and we owe him that witness.
Reading—or listening to—Trembling, Still feels like taking the hand of someone who has guided countless others through the storm. It is a good hand: strong, steady, and purposeful. And like a child holding tightly to a trusted parent, you find you don’t want to let go.”
