Are Shakespeare's Sonnets Alive?

On a brilliant new novel about reading poetry

I was writing about what had long since be come utterable as my own speech and thoughts, and I could ask, “Why am I talking this way?” “What does it mean that these thoughts, and not the sort I was uttering five lines back, are coming out of my mouth?”

Helen Vendler, “Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Reading for Difference”

This week I deeply enjoyed a debut novel: Practice by Rosalind Brown. I was, admittedly, predisposed to buy this book: it fits in a favourite niche among my favourite novels, which is books set on a single day (Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine); its cover is attractively reminiscent of old Faber & Faber poetry books, with their hand-drawn lettering in Albertus font; and — last but not least — I know Rosalind Brown from the University of East Anglia, where she studied for the Creative-Critical Writing PhD that became Practice.

But the reason I enjoyed Practice so much is that its 200 exquisitely-written pages explore the experience that often brings me here: reading poetry, taking those words with me into the world of daily life, and telling a story about the thoughts that follow. More specifically, Practice explores the weird journey that most readers of English poetry go on at some point: losing yourself in the dark house of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and wondering who haunts it.

I don’t want to undersell the novel by implying that it’s entirely about reading poetry. The action — which might also be called the inaction — follows an Oxford student, Annabel, from morning to evening one winter Sunday as she tries to begin an essay on the Sonnets. What’s wonderful about the narration is its calmly honest, high-definition description of every mundane thing she does, including going to the toilet (arguably, a significant plot point towards the end), and the dry wit with which it renders the thoughts intermixed with these tiny activities (a tough piece of lamb served in the college dining hall becomes, as she chews the softer vegetables, “a background project”).