Practice: A Novel [Paperback]

Named aSlateTop 10 Book of the Year
AnNPRandLiterary HubBest 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 aboutor tries to write aboutShakespeares sonnets.

Six oclock 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 Shakespeares sonnets.

Annabel has a meticulously planned routine for her daywork, 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 essays deadline looms, so too does the irrepressible presence of other people: Annabels 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 BrownsPracticeis 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 simultaneously serious and entertaining meditation on physical and intellectual appetites . . . [and] about the art of reading and engaging with a text, body and soul.
Heller McAlpin,NPR(Best Book of the Year)

If youve ever been a literature student in a small room trying to figure out how exactly to become a floating brain il“¬