On falling in love with a book
Ordinary Time by Cathy Rentzenbrink. (It's extraordinary.)
Sometimes you read a book which blows your socks off. It is a little like falling in love: as though the book seeps into your soul as it preoccupies your mind. You think of it whilst cooking, parenting, or dawdling home from work. You even dream about it. ‘What about that part? I wonder what so-and-so was feeling then? And what happened next? It can’t stop there!’ Have you noticed that the best books often leave you wondering this, because you are so invested in they characters? They feel so real they live on in your head.
Of course you know this. Witness the popularity of the Pride and Prejudice sequel - a literary juggernaut because so many people long to know what became of Elizabeth and Darcy. Does Elizabeth call him Fitzwilliam, or Fitz for short? (Personally, I can’t see it, but your Elizabeth might not be my Elizabeth.) If they had a daughter, is she fiery like her parents, or docile like Aunt Jane? What did they talk about when Lady C de B came for tea, once Elizabeth had cajoled Darcy into extending an entente cordiale? Was it all horribly awkward amongst the polluted shades? Many, many questions.
But my point is not to hold forth on P&P. My point is that love can strike at any point. When it happens, I want to put out the bunting, press these books into the hands of strangers, ring the bells because I wholeheartedly believe these these are books which should be READ. They demand it.
Now, I’ve had this experience several times of late. I know! Check me and my fickle nature. And I promise I will come to onto those. But today it’s all about Ordinary Time by Cathy Rentzenbrink (Published 11th July - pre-order on Amazon or from Bookshop.org.)
Rentzenbrink has always been a terrific writer. She is warm, generous and wise. Her memoirs are excellent, The Last Act of Love deserves a place on any bookshelf, and I thoroughly enjoyed her novel, Everyone is Still Alive (in part because it is set in the very London streets in which I lived). But her new novel Ordinary Time is so good it left me breathless. I kept putting it down - partly in fear it would be over all too soon; partly because I was agog at its sheer brilliance. If you love Anne Tyler, Barbara Trapido or Carol Shields - novelists who illuminate the universal truths to be found in even the most ordinary lives - then this book is for you.