ANN is “a reluctant vicar’s wife”, according to the cover blurb of Cathy Rentzenbrink’s new novel, Ordinary Time. She and her husband, Tim, have moved with their ten-year-old son, Sam, to a damp and depressing vicarage in Cornwall, and Ann is struggling. She tries her best, but Tim is interested only in God. When an urgent call for help comes from her brother, Stephen, Ann takes the train to London, where a whole new life of possibilities opens up.
This is Rentzenbrink’s second novel, after Everyone Is Still Alive (2021). She is probably best known for the 2015 memoir that made the Sunday Times bestsellers list, The Last Act of Love, about her brother’s accident, when both were teenagers. He suffered profound brain damage, and lived for eight years with round-the-clock-care, before the decision was taken to withdraw nutrition and hydration. Two further works of non-fiction followed: A Manual for Heartache: How to feel better (2017), and Dear Reader: The comfort and joy of books (2020).
What was the genesis of the new novel? “I’ve always been interested in faith,” she says. “My aunt was married to a vicar, and I used to go and stay with them when I was quite small — seven or eight — when he was a curate, and I found it fascinating.”
It was partly the graveyard — “I’ve got a lifelong, utter passion for graveyards” — but it was also the family dynamic. “I noticed that it was quite stressful. [My uncle] was quite stressed out by having to take services. Even at a young age, I could see it was really tiring for him, that he had to be nice to all these people, and then hadn’t got much left when he came home.”
Like many novelists, she has always been an observer. “I was interested in watching the grown-ups and sussing them out. I could see he wanted to be a good person, but he wasn’t actually being that nice to his wife and sons, because he was tired out by this public stuff.”
What her uncle really liked was prayer. “I think he liked being alone with God. But being a vicar in this modern world, you don’t get to spend that much time alone with God. You’re always dealing with the needs of the congregation.”
This early impression has been borne out by many more recent conversations with members of the clergy: “Sometimes, it’s just the bureaucracy that’s exhausting and draining, and then they don’t really have enough fuel in the tank to deal with real people.”
The book is a companion piece to her earlier novel, Everyone Is Still Alive (2021), in which Stephen makes an appearance. It is also inspired by Anna Karenina. “I’ve always wanted to write a novel where a woman has difficult choices to make. At some point, I realised my vicar’s wife idea and my Anna Karenina idea were the same thing; so I squished them together.”
Otherwise, churchgoing was not really part of her upbringing. “My mum’s very atheist, and my dad says he’s an atheist, but I think it’s more that he’s an Irish Catholic, and he suffered at the hands of the Christian Brothers. I always think, with my dad, it’s not so much that he doesn’t believe in God, but that he doesn’t like him.”
Rentzenbrink attended a Roman Catholic secondary school — “because it was the closest one” — and really enjoyed it. “I really liked RE. I won the school RE prize, and I used to read in mass,” she says. She had an inspiring RE teacher, who had trained for the priesthood before deciding that he wanted a family. “He was brilliant, one of those really inspirational teachers. Again, it was that thing of realising that people make these choices.”
How did she carry out the research for the novel? “I talked to a lot of people. With novel research, if you find people who have got good imaginations, and are up for it, then it’s just really blissful,” she says.
“I met this amazing curate who came on a creative writing course. We had lots of long conversations about faith and doubt, much of which didn’t end up in the book. But I wanted to understand the background. I didn’t feel I could write from the perspective of someone with a very active faith, but I felt I could pull off writing about someone with a sort of a flickering faith.”
IN THE novel, Ann’s faith is definitely of the flickering variety, unlike her husband’s, and this is part of what drives the narrative. “I could just see a very realistic situation: that somebody lonely could meet someone kind, and sort of accept the faith alongside everything else. And then, later on, say, ‘Hang on a second. What am I thinking?’”
Like her characters, Rentzenbrink lives in Cornwall, with her husband and 14-year-old son, although much of her childhood was spent in Yorkshire, living above a pub. Although she attended a few local church services — and the novel’s title came from seeing a stack of service booklets on one such visit — she was careful not to quiz any local vicars. “I didn’t want there to be any crossover with my plot. I didn’t want even the suspicion,” she says.
She wondered, while researching the book, whether she was actually looking for an excuse to go to church, without upsetting her atheist parents (who love the book, she says). “But as soon as I started going to services, I’m afraid that I realised that it’s empty churches I like, and quite deep, wide-ranging conversations with people of faith. But the actual church service, and the reading out of the parish notices . . . all of that sort of stuff was definitely not helping me get closer to whatever I was personally looking for.”
Rentzenbrink, like Ann, was “quite bored” in church — and this, she says, is Ann’s problem, rather than a problem with God. “That’s actually where I’ve come out of it. Sam says at one point, ‘I feel sorry for God, because all these human beings do terrible things, and then so they’re all being done in his name.’ What I currently feel is that all organised religion at its best is like a best guess at what God might want, and often it’s a really poor, misjudged interpretation.”
Her church in the novel has been a site of worship since the sixth century. “I can’t help thinking how different that must have been. Those people — I mean, they wouldn’t have had penicillin, but I think it was probably much easier to be religious, without all that stuff you have to do.” She found herself thinking that it was “an absolute miracle” that there were any clergy at all.
THE character she has created in Tim tends towards joylessness. “Tim does have a real faith, and at the points at which he manages to connect with that, I think we see a bit of light in him,” she says. “But he struggles under the weight of all the demands on him. If he were a teacher, he’d be the same. He’d want to do right by the children. But then Ofsted would get him down, and he’d end up in a grump, and his wife would be having horrible time. So part of that is Tim’s nature.”
And Rentzenbrink confesses to a crossover between the tensions that Tim faces and aspects of her own life. “I go and teach creative writing for a week, and that feels like an inspired thing for me. It’s very intense, and often very tiring, but also there’s the sense that you’re in the service of other people, and that’s quite intoxicating. It’s very seductive. And then I go home and have to deal with the problems of my own dishwasher and laundry basket.
“There is a thing sometimes where you think, well, I’ve just been on the radio talking about my relationship with the divine, or my creativity, and now I’ve got to do this slightly boring thing with these people in my own house, who don’t think I’m all that great.”
The complications inherent in living out a vocation will be familiar territory for Church Times readers. Some may find aspects of the book uncomfortable reading. But she has, she says, done her best to be respectful of church life and churchpeople. “I feel very sympathetic towards faith. I’m not trying to call anyone out: that was never my intention.” Nor, of course, is it intended to be representative: “I hope there are lots of joyous clergy out there with happy spouses.”
And Ordinary Time is a compassionate, thoughtful, and entertaining read, with forgiveness and redemption at its heart. Rentzenbrink is hopeful for her characters’ future. “I want to be optimistic for my characters, but also, actually, optimistic for humanity,” she says.
She doesn’t believe in creating baddies. “I believe in human beings, and in their capacity for goodness. And I do really believe that when someone is behaving in a way that we don’t like, it is usually coming from a place of pain,” she says.
Nor does she think that a novel has to have an antagonist to succeed. “If there is an antagonist, it’s modern life and its perils: the burden of technology and the crappy education system and the way that phones are supposed to make us free but somehow they’ve just tied us all up in knots.”
So, how did she move from memoir to fiction? She had always loved novels by middle-aged people about middle-class characters, she says, referring to Julian Barnes and Mary Wesley as early influences. “Growing up in Yorkshire, in this pub, I didn’t know anybody like these people,” she says. That didn’t stop her wanting to write her own novel. “I just found it all wonderful.”
Her brother’s accident threw “a complete grenade” into her family’s life. “And then, whilst I was trying to write other things, I eventually realised I just had to write [The Last Act of Love]. I didn’t ever really expect it to be published. I wrote it to write out myself, so I could write my other books. This novel is actually almost my first novel, because it feels almost like it was probably my first idea. And so it feels very nice to loop back to it.” It is very much “a novel of mid-life”, she says. (She is 51.)
The next book will be about Agatha Christie, an author she thinks is “spot on” in her observations about village life and “difficult parishioners who need to be appeased”.
She looks forward to hearing what readers make of Ordinary Time. “Some writers really hate having their books interpreted back to them by readers. I really love it, it’s almost my favourite thing. There are a few dilemmas in the novel, and already I’m really interested by how people respond.”
Ordinary Time by Cathy Rentzenbrink is published by Orion at £20 (Church Times Bookshop £18); 978-1-4746-2117-5.
Cathy Rentzenbrink will be speaking at the 2025 Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. The full programme will be announced later this year.
Ordinary Time — an extract
I RINSE the last plate, put it on the draining board and look out of the window. There are two enormous seagulls strutting on our path and a magpie sitting in the tree staring at me. One for sorrow, I think, and am immediately annoyed because I am reminding myself of my mother and I hate it when that happens.
Tim comes in. He is wearing his dog collar.
“Look,” I say, pointing at the magpie, “All that black and white you’re wearing. You could be the magpie’s friend. Arrived in the nick of time.”
He looks confused.
“One for sorrow,” I say. “Magpies are bad luck on their own. You need two for joy.”
“Oh,” Tim says. “Superstition.”
I wonder if I should try to explain that it was a joke but can’t be bothered. The closer Tim gets to God, the less he has a sense of humour.
Tim looks at his watch. “I’ve got to get over to the hospital. Lillian Holt collapsed this morning. They think she’s fractured her skull.”
“Poor Mrs Holt,” I say. “Where was she?”
“In the garden. With her daughter. One minute she was talking about her salvias and the next she was on the ground. Heart attack. She’s asking for me. Her daughter says she’s got something on her mind. Can I have some water?”
I turn on the tap, fill a glass. He takes it and I watch the movement in his throat as he swallows. His mind is already at the hospital with Mrs Holt. Tim likes a crisis. And who could turn down being spiritually necessary in the face of death? He hands me the empty glass.
“Will you be back for school pick up?”
He looks at his watch again. “Hard to leave a death bed.”
“I can do it,” I say. “Don’t worry.”
Not that Tim is worrying. It was his idea to collect Sam on Wednesdays so they could have some quality time together but it rarely happens. Too many situations are hard to leave and Tim’s well-meant intention to spend time with his family collapses under the weight of the demands of his congregation. I need to get a job, really, as that is the only way he will respect my time, but if I mention it he purses up his lips and I can see he still thinks it is too soon. He doesn’t want to lose access to my tap-turning-on abilities until he is more settled into this new parish.
He leaves without saying goodbye. I rinse the glass under the tap and put it on the draining board. I pick it up again and replay the moment when Tim asked for water and I gave it to him. What was the point of me in that interaction? A moving part but less essential than either the tap or the glass. I could be replaced by a robot. Or Tim could just do it himself.
This is my life. All day, every day. Filling cups and plates and then cleaning them so they are ready for when Tim and Sam need to be replenished. I look out of the window. The seagulls have gone. The magpie is still there in the tree. How strange that the whole of the human race cannot tolerate its single status and wants it to couple up. Don’t do it, I whisper. Stay free. It stares back at me. Then, almost a wink, or a grin, and there is a flash of iridescent blue as it flies off.