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An astonishing first novel about a day in the life of a young student who experiences her thoughts, fantasies, and wishes as she writes about―or tries to write about―Shakespeare's sonnets.
Rosalind Brown's Practice shows us just one day. Annabel, sitting in her small student room, attempts to write an essay about Shakespeare. She follows a meticulous, solitary routine but finds it repeatedly thrown off course as the day progresses: by family and friends who demand her attention and time, by thoughts of her much older boyfriend and his impending visit, by wild sexual fantasies and stories of her own invented characters―and by darker crises, obliquely glimpsed but capable of derailing Annabel's carefully laid plans.
"[A] gorgeously written debut ... Brown's attentiveness to the suppleness of language and the poetry of everyday life makes this slim novel absolutely transporting ... A brilliant and keen work about being fully alive." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Brown's prose soars ("Could an essay smile with all the smiles she has for the Sonnets: the sad smile of sympathy, the wry smile sharing in his self-mockery... the soft sunlit smile when he offers an image of great beauty"). Lovers of the written word will be impressed." —Publishers Weekly
"This is a work to be compared with Marilynne Robinson's beautiful and boundless Housekeeping, and a writer to be watched with great expectations." —Library Journal
"Exerts a strange fascination ... Practice is funny, intense and strangely gripping; after all, it's the non-events―stray thoughts and ignoble bodily needs among them―that form the texture of a life." ―Financial Times (UK)
"Annabel aspires to 'understand subtle, fragile things.' This might be an apt description of Practice too ... A touching portrait of an ordinary life and 'what happens when repeatedly nothing happens.'" ―The Spectator (UK)
"If Practice is a novel about wrestling with discipline, it's equally about the generative opportunities of distraction and a meditation on the wellsprings of creativity ... Brown treats us to some firecracker phrases ... Brown's skill in turning words is evident." ―The Telegraph (UK)
"Initially at least, Practice feels like the musings of a creative writing student―but that might be the point of this fine debut ... in pithy yet heightened prose. The student's methodical approach to her work and life is brilliantly shattered by Brown's ability to throw a shocking line into proceedings, so that what begins quietly becomes a compelling insight into the recesses of the human mind." ―The Observer (UK)
"Practice totally won me over, not least on account of its many passages of exquisite writing." ―Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
"Practice won me round with its good writing. A beautifully written meditation on the contentments of reading. Rosalind Brown feels like the real thing." ―Andrew Miller, author of Pure
This information about Practice was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rosalind Brown was born in 1987, grew up in Cambridge, England, and now lives in Norwich. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Best British Short Stories 2017, Lighthouse, Ambit, MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture, and Propel Magazine.
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