Practice

A Novel

by Rosalind Brown

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Pub Date Jun 25 2024 | Archive Date Jul 25 2024

Description

A Vox and NPR Best Book of the Year

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.

Six o’clock in the morning, Sunday, at the worn-out end of January.

In a small room, cold and dim and quiet, an undergraduate student works on an essay about Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Annabel has a meticulously planned routine for her day—work, yoga, meditation, long walks— but finds it repeatedly thrown off course. Despite her efforts, she cannot stop her thoughts from slipping off their intended track into the shadows of elaborate erotic fantasies.

As the essay’s deadline looms, so too does the irrepressible presence of other people: Annabel’s boyfriend, Rich, keen to come visit her; her family and friends who demand her attention; and darker crises, obliquely glimpsed, all threatening to disturb the much-cherished quiet in her mind.

Exquisitely crafted, wryly comic, and completely original, Rosalind Brown’s Practice is a novel about the life of the mind and the life of the body, about the repercussions of a rigid routine and the deep pleasures of literature.

A Note From the Publisher

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.

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:...

Advance Praise

★ “[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)

“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.” —Suzi Feay, Financial Times

“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.” —Ben East, The Observer (UK)

“A novel spectacularly committed to a young woman’s intellectual and bodily appetites, written in exact and tender prose.” —Sarah Moss, author of The Fell

“From the narrowest and most confined of premises, Rosalind Brown has conjured a novel as big as a world. Reading this book is a strange and shimmering joy; a glimpse of a miracle.” —Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13

“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

“Practice is rich and precise and intelligent. I started counting up paradoxes: a novel about restriction that stages beautiful questions about fantasy; a novel limited to a single day that swoops among time frames; a novel where containment allows for bravura stylistic power. It’s a unique novel, and Rosalind Brown is a unique – and wonderful – novelist.” —Adam Thirlwell, author of The Future Future