Author(s): Rosalind Brown

General Fiction

Six o'clock in the morning, Sunday, at the worn-out end of January. In a small room in an Oxford college, cold and dim and full of 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; no apples after meals, no coffee on an empty stomach - but finds it repeatedly thrown off course. Despite her efforts, she cannot stop her thoughts slipping off their intended track into the shadows of elaborate erotic fantasies. And as the essay's deadline looms, so too does the irrepressible presence of other people: Annabel's boyfriend Rich, keen to come and 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, 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.

MATILDA BOOKSHOP REVIEW

This cellular-level dissection of a day in the life, and mind, of a young student, while she wrestles with Shakespeare’s sonnets, is a compelling and thrilling novel. Annabel's attempts to find clarity in her writing are hindered by the dualities of her life, the schism between an intellectual existence and the demands of her animal body. Brown's great skill is in detailing the tracks our thoughts run toward unbidden, the tributaries of our subconscious, and how much of our lives, and its eternal dualities, is internalised, never to be seen even by those closest to us. GAVIN