Practice is a subtle but deeply affecting novel about student life, self-control, and the hidden pressures of trying to be “okay.” Rosalind Brown’s writing is precise and intimate, turning everyday moments into something emotionally charged and meaningful. It’s not a loud or dramatic book, but it’s quietly powerful — the kind that stays with you and makes you reflect on how much of ourselves we keep hidden.

Practice is narrowly focused on one young woman’s travails as she studies literature at Oxford, at times feeling as though it traced the minute by minute motions of the main character as she wakes, writes, think and walks. For company there are the writers she studies, notably Shakespeare, and her memories of those friends, acquaintances and lovers around her. The cold brief light of a winter’s day and her thoughts of it all, of who she is and who she could be. A Bildungsroman of sorts with a pleasing sense of a moment in time, a sketch from a life that extends beyond the book, lingering long as it does in the memory after reading.