W&N snares Brown’s ‘exquisite’ debut novel charting one day in a student’s life

The debut novel by Rosalind Brown, Practice, has been signed by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (W&N).

Lettice Franklin, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Tracy Bohan at the Wylie Agency. North American rights have been acquired by Mitzi Angel at FSG, and German rights have been acquired by Blessing Verlag. Practice will be published by W&N in summer 2024 in hardback, audio and e-book.

Practice follows the course of one day, in which student Annabel, sitting in a small university room, attempts to write an essay about Shakespeare. She follows a meticulously controlled routine, but one that is repeatedly thrown off course. By family and friends who demand her attention and time; by thoughts of her much older boyfriend and his impending visit; by wild sexual fantasies and stories of her own invented characters; and by darker crises, obliquely glimpsed, but capable of derailing Annabel’s carefully-laid plans.

Franklin said: “What are the dangers of a rigid routine, of impressive self-discipline? What is more important: our work or the people in our life? The life of the mind or the life of the body? These are the questions that Rosalind Brown’s exquisite debut novel Practice asks.

“Imagine a campus novel, where the hero prioritises not their romantic or social dramas, but the work they have to finish by the next day. Imagine a novel wrought in the most exquisite sentences, a novel that pays attention to every detail, a novel that is infused with poetry, wit and intelligence – and then you will have something close to Practice. I think Rosalind Brown is a major talent and I am so pleased to welcome her to the W&N list.”

Brown, whose work has appeared in Best British Short Stories 2017 (Salt), Lighthouse, Ambit, MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture and Propel Magazine, said: “Practice emerged from a few images of stillness and winter gloom, and from the seductive but slippery world of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Annabel is a character hedged about by thorny questions: how to live as a scholar, how to balance the richness and risk of fantasy, how to enjoy the social nourishment she needs but doesn’t always want, and how to respond to other people’s suffering. 

“Rather than try to answer these questions, I wanted to explore – with equal sympathy – both the appeal of her beautiful, solitary life, and her unease with the morality of living this way.”