For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain

Today’s book-banning efforts replicate the dynamics of past political and religious upheavals when books were destroyed, including thousands of medieval manuscripts, many written by women.

Among those that survived were two mystical treatises: The Book of Margery Kempe discovered by chance in the 1930s in a dusty cupboard on an English country estate, and Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, given its first complete printing in 1901.

Victoria MacKenzie’s delicate, meditative novel evokes the lives of the two female mystics who authored these texts. In exquisite, spare prose, she conjures the distinctive voices of Margery and Julian, two… show more.

I never read new fiction these days, but then I saw this intriguing title in a book review, and was hooked. I bought the book and read it in a single sitting.

Set in 1413, it is a fictionalised account of two major figures of English letters and mysticism from the period. Margery Kempe, a mother of fourteen, is troubled by visions – are they from God or the Devil? – and goes to speak to Julian of Norwich, a celibate, walled-in anchoress of 23-years standing, who is troubled by visions of her own.

It might sound odd, and perhaps… show more.