Named a Slate Top 10 Book of the Year An NPR and Literary Hub Best 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 about―or tries to write about―Shakespeare’s sonnets. 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. “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 you’ve ever been a literature student in a small room trying to figure out how exactly to become a floating brain instead of this messing, wanting thing (and if you’re reading this, there is a fair chance of it), it will speak very loudly.” ―Emily Temple, Literary Hub (Best Book of the Year) “In Brown’s precise, elegant prose, we watch Annabel go through the carefully plotted rituals of her day . . . Most impressive is Brown’s depiction of having an ongoing fantasy that stretches out for years and that you slip into and out of at odd moments of the day . . . It rings deeply true to life, in a way I have never quite seen an author conjure before .” ―Constance Grady, Vox (Best Book of the Year So Far) “Absorbing . . . [Brown] is such a vivid writer . . . Practice offers a refreshing midsummer’s break.” ―Maureen Corrigan, NPR “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