For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie: Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain is one of those books I suspect I’d not have read if I hadn’t been sent it. Proof that stepping outside your comfort zone often reaps rewards. Victoria MacKenzie’s ambitious debut reimagines the lives of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, both of whose books are still read and studied many centuries after they were written.

Amidst the bustle of this world , it does no harm to have a woman who watches

After her mother’s death, Julian of Norwich requested permission to be made an anchoress, a religious recluse, walled up in a cell attached to St Julian’s Church, her maid living in a neighbouring room. From a wealthy background, her life had been marked by tragedy losing many members of her family, including her beloved husband and child, to the waves of pestilence that swept through the fourteenth century. Her withdrawal had been prompted by a series of religious visions when she was afflicted by a fever aged thirty about which she remains silent. In contrast, Margery Kempe proclaims her ever more baroque visions of Christ to the world, standing on the streets of Bishop’s Lynn, heedless of the risk of heresy charges for both her own life and her husband’s reputation. Seeking advice from a sympathetic local priest, she travels to Norwich to meet Julian who entrusts her with something precious: the book of meditations written in her cell. Margery will also commit her story to paper, dictating it to her son.

Her voice swanned and preened and boasted, yet there was another note to her song.

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Margery Kempe was the loneliest woman I had ever met

MacKenzie alternates the stories of these very different women, telling them through their own voices in striking, simple but often beautiful language. Julian is quietly reflective, choosing to remain silent about her visions but engaging with those who want the blessing of the holy anchoress. The risks she takes are confined to her literacy, forbidden to women. Margery is entirely different, beset by visions of Christ which are both visceral and sensuous, unable to remain silent despite the regular burning of heretics. The meeting when it happens takes up little of the novella but there’s a sense that these two women, the antithesis of each other, form an immediate bond based on their mutual faith. MacKenzie ends with an epilogue which tells us that The Book of Margery Kempe was found entirely by accident, falling out of a cupboard in 1934 when someone was looking for a ping pong ball, while Revelations of Divine Love was kept hidden by a succession of women for centuries. A riveting book, a celebration of the resilience and determination of women, extraordinarily ambitious for a debut but MacKenzie carries it off beautifully.

Bloomsbury Books: London 9781526647887 176 pages Hardback