From the Publisher
Rosalind Brown’s tight, sly debut, Practice, [is] a welcome gift for those who dither about their dithering. It presents procrastination as a vital, life-affirming antidote to the cult of self-discipline, while also giving the reader a delicious text with which to while away her leisure time . . . What Annabel senses, and Brown beautifully drives home, is that it’s the strange mental collisions between the thinking mind and the wandering mind that yield the most interesting results.”
—Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic
“Brown renders what she does do with such rigor and lucidity that the rhythm of her actions become a reflection of Shakespeare’s poems themselves, as well as the sort of fine-grained textual analysis she aspires toward . . . Many of the book’s most beautiful passages speak to the subtle, mysterious alchemy of scholarship . . . Practice beautifully illustrates a tension at the heart of not just loving reading but loving writ large.”
—Meara Sharma, Los Angeles Review of Books
“There’s a genius in the idea of using Shakespeare’s sonnets, which form an exploration of desire deeply and messily concerned with questions of gender and selfhood, to illustrate the complicated process of a young woman figuring out who and what she is . . . A novel written for readers, which may seem a silly distinction to draw; all novels are written to be read. But Brown appeals specifically to those who have found themselves shaping their own identities around the words of others, and then coming to wonder whether that process has honed their individuality or lessened it . . . By reading, we practice being alive.”
—Talya Zax, The Washington Post
“It is hard to think, however, of a novel that describes as precisely as Rosalind Brown’s Practice does what happens when an ardent young person sits down to read and learn and write . . . Exquisitely attuned to the thrill and boredom of academic reading . . . Practice conveys the hesitancy, extravagance and naiveté of a young mind discovering what writing can do.”
—Brian Dillon, The New York Times
“Brown has delicately articulated one of the less-discussed pleasures of reading: a kind of anti-reading, a momentum that gathers not in spite of distraction but because of it.”
—Dan Piepenbring, Harper’s
“Practice is one of those surprise charmers that initially appears to be microscopically focused yet encompasses its main character’s startlingly intimate, wide-ranging thoughts and feelings—both scholarly and libidinous—about life, love, literature, solitude, self-discipline, physical and intellectual appetites, and more . . . Ms. Brown’s novel contains a kingdom in its pages, probing nothing less than a reader’s relationship with a text and how to satisfyingly reconcile one’s mind and body.”
—Heller McAlpin, Wall Street Journal
“[Practice] is a novel about the possibilities, and the limits, of attention, or even the life of the mind itself . . . It is a book you can read in a day, and also the most convincing and compelling portrait of a single consciousness that I have come across in recent memory.”
—Emily Temple, Literary Hub
“"[A] sensuous and erudite debut . . . Brown’s prose soars . . . Lovers of the written word will be impressed. 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
“[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)
“A fascinating, beautifully wrought theatre of the mind that reminded me by turns of Virginia Woolf and Nicholson Baker.”
—Olivia Laing, author of Everybody: A Book about Freedom
“Each sentence is a taut, considered work of art . . . Every thought and distraction . . . is carefully described, and the result is hypnotic as the reader is drawn into Annabel’s world. Almost Virginia Woolf-like in its focus on the passing of time and somewhat reminiscent of the poetic prose of Eimear McBride (A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, 2014), this novel announces a unique and exciting new talent in British fiction.”
—Alexander Moran, Booklist
“[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)
“I had a lot of fun with Practice by Rosalind Brown. I think only she and Proust can get me into the space where I'm happy to read about someone walking across a room for all these pages. You're reading about reading; you have to be really good to do that in a compelling way.”
—Helen Oyeyemi, author of Parasol Against the Axe
“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
“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.’”
—Camille Cassidy, The Spectator
“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
“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.”
—Katherine Waters, The Telegraph
“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)
“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
