Life intrudes on the life of a student struggling to write a paper
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.
Rosalind Brown’s Practice shows us just one day. Annabel, sitting in her small student room, attempts to write an essay about Shakespeare. She follows a meticulous, solitary routine but finds it repeatedly thrown off course as the day progresses: 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.
Rosalind Brown’s debut novel is getting some glowing and gushing pre-publication buzz, and I was lucky enough to receive a review copy from the publisher. As someone who has spent much of the past 20 years in and around academia, I was drawn to the premise: it sounded like a slightly different kind of campus novel. Brown is undoubtedly a gifted writer, but ultimately I think the premise was a little thin to maintain an entire novel. Continue reading
As a life-long metalhead, my eyes must be tuned to spot “metal script”, as they did on the cover of John Wray‘s upcoming new novel, Gone to the Wolves. “What’s that about?” I wondered. The new novel from the author of 
Lessons from the city-state of Los Angeles
A page-turning memoir of contemporary Silicon Valley
Maria Dahvana Headley‘s latest novel sounds really interesting. It is a “modern retelling of the literary classic Beowulf, set in American suburbia as two mothers — a housewife and a battle-hardened veteran — fight to protect those they love”. The Mere Wife is due to be published by MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux in July 2018. Here’s the synopsis:
Civilian Reader 