Practice by Rosalind Brown

 Rosalind Brown, Practice (Widenfeld & Nicolson)

A novel about writing an essay at Oxford University, by a writer and thus an Eng Lit essay, sounds about as self-absorbed as one could get. Not a great deal happens. For some time it is more like an essay on Literary Theory itself as Annabel immerses herself in Shakespeare's Sonnets in search of something to say about them. Novels don't come much more 'literary' than this and while it will have great appeal to those who have an interest in such things it's less likely to thrill the 'general reader'.

Rosalind Brown is a gifted writer and we must avoid speculating on how much Annabel is her, as one could be excused for supposing in a first novel. There is surely some ironic distance between author and the main character's preoccupations with her work, diet, yoga and daily routine. She has a boyfriend nearly twice her age but 36 won't sound very old to readers of a certain age. Also, then, maybe we ought to make allowances for some of the attractively fine-sounding literary pronouncements and see them as the sort of things such students relish.

At what point does the quality of the work start to redeem the pitifulness of the scenario. At what point does it no longer redeem,

is a question Annabel asks about Shakespeare and, by extension, we might ask of her and Rosalind. It is the sort of elusive literariness that the likes of us enjoy involving ourselves in that others think is self-indulgent.

Then Patricia said Anyone who studies an extraordinary person has to come up against the fact of not being as good as her, believe me I've felt that too,

is a propos Virginia Woolf and well worth saying.

For something that takes place mostly in Annabel's head, Practice makes numerous excurions into bodily functions, sometimes graphically described which establishes a vivid dualism and the second half of the book moves into her social circle as the essay's deadline approaches without her finding a theme she can deal with in the diminishing time allowed. What with that and the apparently fragile state of her nerves and relationship, a mainly eventless story reaches its climax.

It could easily be read in a day but I read it over two which made it a book of two halves, the second not as clever or impressive as the first. It had seemed to be making its way towards something greater than what we are ultimately left with, which was of less consequence but which might be the point. I ended with less sympathy for Annabel, and the book, than I thought I'd have but maybe that is the life of an Oxford undergraduate who takes herself very seriously.