A novel about (not) writing an essay

In a famous essay about retiring to his family’s estate in hopes of writing, Michel de Montaigne compares his mind to a runaway horse: “Determined to devote myself as far as I could to spending what little life I have left quietly and privately; it seemed to me then that the greatest favour I could do for my mind was to leave it in total idleness, caring for itself, concerned only with itself, calmly thinking of itself.” But instead of the calm that he sought, Montaigne found that his mind “bolted off like a runaway horse, taking far more trouble over itself than it ever did over anyone else; it gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monstrosities, one after another, without order or fitness” that he decided to let it run.

Rosalind Brown’s debut novel could be understood as a midrash on Montaigne’s metaphor. Annabel, a 21-year-old student at Oxford, wakes up on a Sunday morning with the intention of spending a solitary day writing an essay on Shakespeare’s sonnets that is due on Tuesday. She does everything she knows how to do to keep her mind clear and focused on the task at hand. She drinks peppermint tea instead of coffee. She has all of her books and notes and annotated sonnets ready at hand. But the mind and body do not obey. By the end of the day—the novel takes place in a single period of waking to bedtime—the essay has not been written and her mind has not really given the sonnets much space.

I’m sorry to have introduced that spoiler, but this novel is not for the plot-driven reader. We watch Annabel make tea, prepare lunch, and go for a walk. The action, like in Montaigne’s essay, is all inside Annabel’s disciplined practice and runaway mind.