Review: 'Practice: A Novel' by Rosalind Brown
Pub. Date: 6/25/2024
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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.
Disclaimer: I am a Medievalist and studied English literature for my BA. I give this disclaimer because it means I have spent a big chunk of my early adulthood sitting at my desk, desperately trying to have something intelligent and/or creative and/or insightful to say about the Greats, from Shakespeare and Chaucer to Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel. When you go right into a Bachelor degree from high school you suddenly find yourself in a space where you are technically an adult and can determine your own life, and yet you have no idea where to go and what to do. I've always liked thinking of those years as my practice run at life. I had a part-time job and practiced at being an employee. I met new people and practiced at being interesting. I met boys and practiced at being seduced and/or seducing. I fell in love with literature and practiced at being someone with insight. At the time it did not feel that way, but with a good decade worth of hind-sight, it now does. Those early years of adulthood are a mess and yet they are also some of the brightest years, when everything is fresh, new, and dramatic. Rosalind Brown's Practice encapsulated this in a wonderful way.
It is Sunday and tomorrow Annabel has to hand in an essay about Shakespeare's sonnets. Her day is organised, structured, she has a plan. Throughout Practice we follow her as she goes through her day and are given insight into the big and small of her life, the big questions looming over her relationship with the older Rich and over her quest of finding out who she is, and the small of bowel movements, breakfasts, and walks through campus. The novel is told in what I would call vignettes, meaning that they are small bursts of narration, sometimes only a few sentences, sometimes a page and a half or two. They are chronological, taking us through Annabel's day as she thinks about last year, about what she should do tomorrow, about her roommates, and as she sinks away into fantasy. These fantasy moments, in which she has two imaginary companions, the Scholar and the Seducer, were some of my favourites as they were just a beautiful depiction of how sumptuous fantasizing can be. These two companions represent aspects of herself and yet are also doorways into other ways of being and represent her own questions about seduction, passion, and focus. I also really enjoyed the snippets in which Annabel is dealing with the Sonnets and even highlighted a few passages there in which Brown just absolutely nails the joy and frustration of literary analysis. This is a meandering novel, fully focused on the emotional state of mind of the main character. For some, the focus might be at once too narrow and too loose, but considering Annabel's penchant for Woolf, I think it is worth reading this novel as you would one of hers: with close attention and a certain emotional abandon.
This is Rosalind Brown's debut novel and I love how confidently and sharply she has crafted Practice. From its form, those vignettes or snippets, to its honest writing, think detailed descriptions of female anatomy and desire, the whole novel quickly took a hold of my mind. As I said above, for me the whole novel felt like an excellent display of how much we practice our lives as early adults. In the process of that, Brown does tackle a number of issues that may be difficult for readers, specifically disordered eating and relationships that feel a bit off, age-gap wise, and perhaps manipulative. Brown also dives very comfortable into everything physical, from Annabel's sexual encounters and deepest fantasies, to her bowel movements and yoga sessions. Annabel is also not always likeable. She is very driven to do something, achieve something, plan her day perfectly and optimize herself, somehow, and it makes her cold and detached. This is the point, however. This endless practice at life prevents her from living. What got me most, as an example of this, was a brief moment when Annabel loses something she cherished. The spiral of loss and anxiety this triggers reminded me so much of my younger self, who still echoes within me in times of stress. In many ways, I am the target audience for Practice and so it comes as no surprise that I enjoyed it very much. I think its no-nonsense look at a young woman's practice runs at being a person is fascinating and I can't wait to read more by Rosalind Brown in the future.
I give this novel...
4 Universes!
Practice is a deeply evocative, emotional novel, perfect for those who have held themselves to high expectations, who love literature, and who just want to feel something.
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