Practice

Brown’s sensuous and erudite debut follows a single day in the life of an Oxford student as she brainstorms an essay about Shakespeare’s sonnets. Annabel has yet to decide on her theme, and has risen early to “simply sit” with the text­—as a tutor once advised her to do when faced with an assignment. Despite her desire to focus, she can’t. Instead, she drinks tea, walks in the park, does yoga, and fantasizes about sex. Amid Annabel’s reveries, Brown inserts florid depictions of mundane matters (Annabel “sits on the toilet to piss. Empties herself into calmness”). Low-stakes tension simmers over whether Annabel will allow her older boyfriend to visit her on campus, while news of a friend’s hospitalization for anorexia provokes guilty feelings. When Annabel does turn her mind to the sonnets, Brown’s prose soars (“Could an essay smile with all the smiles she has for the Sonnets: the sad smile of sympathy, the wry smile sharing in his self-mockery... the soft sunlit smile when he offers an image of great beauty”). Lovers of the written word will be impressed. Agent: Tracy Bohan, Wylie Agency. (June)