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Practice
- Narrated by: Imogen Wilde
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
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Practice
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Summary
In a small room in an Oxford college, cold and dim and full of 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; no apples after meals, no coffee on an empty stomach - but finds it repeatedly thrown off course. Despite her efforts, she cannot stop her thoughts slipping off their intended track into the shadows of elaborate erotic fantasies.
And as the essay's deadline looms, so too does the irrepressible presence of other people: Annabel's boyfriend Rich, keen to come and 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, 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.
Critic reviews
'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.' (Adam Thirlwell, author of The Future Future)
'A day in the life of an introspective and erudite student, Practice makes clear the gulf between an interior life and the one that is presented to the world. Rosalind Brown has a rare ability to record - with great humour, originality and near-hallucinogenic precision - the significance, or not, of each tumbling moment and thought.' (Jennifer Higgie, author of The Mirror and the Palette)
'A detailed and lyrical ode to one young woman's way of being, and to the little rituals that guide her. I found Practice to be both cautionary and rousing. A candid portrait of a day in a tightly controlled life.' (Chloë Ashby, author of Second Self)