I’ve been a guest on a number of writing podcasts including: Confessions of a Debut Novelist, A Pair of Bookends, Little Atoms, Mostly Books and The Writing Life.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. A vibrant portrait of female courage * OBSERVER * Lightly done but intensely felt, it's mind-expanding stuff * Guardian, Summer reading - 50 brilliant books to discover * I've already finished Victoria Mackenzie's limpid novella . I could see the quiet, contemplative Julian alone in her cell, offering wisdom and comfort to those who came to her window and I could see and hear the boisterous, crazy-sounding Margery hectoring her neighbors and husband with her copious weeping and accepting coins and abuse for sharing her visions of being with Jesus, Mary, and the saints and repeating all the promises God made to her. The faith of both women, and their closeness to Christ, shines through the text, which also focuses on their fallability, Kempe's vanity and Julian's loneliness.Comprendo il contenuto, ma non si può parlare della stessa cosa per 141 pagine con le stesse parole. None of these devotions seem particularly useful to the world at large – they don’t feed the poor or clothe the naked for example, but perhaps they do, in a way, comfort the sick and dying. would read to somebody who knows more about them; but I thought the clarity and simplicity with which Mackenzie conveyed the ideas these women struggled with was impressive. And than sche was bodyn be owyr Lord for to gon to an ankres in the same cyté whych hyte Dame Jelyan.

She was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, as well as being awarded prestigious writing residencies in Scotland, Finland and Australia. Her visions of Christ – which have long alienated her from her family and neighbours, and incurred her husband’s abuse – have placed her in danger with the men of the Church, who have begun to hound her as a heretic.

I think it would be a tremendous discussion piece for a book club type event, or even just coffee chats. A creature displaying these signs must steadfastly believe that the Holy Ghost dwells in their soul. Her visions of Christ - which have long alienated her from her family and neighbours, and incurred her husband's abuse - have placed her in danger with the men of the Church, who have begun to hound her as a heretic.

One from the huge amounts of loss she has faced in her life, and one from the huge amount of children she's been forced to have and the burden of womanhood that she struggles under the weight of. She encouraged her to place all her trust in God and not fear the world’s language, as the more disdain, shame, and reproach she faced in the world, the greater her merit in God’s sight. Following my remark to you earlier today that I took notice of your reviews (especially if negative 😉 ), I thought I should tell you it was you who drove me to this book, which I’ve just finished. As Victoria Mackenzie notes in her afterword, Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love is the earliest book written in English by a woman, while Margery’s dictated The Book of Margery Kempe is the first autobiography in English by anybody at all. 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.

I tore through this -- JULIA ARMFIELD, author of OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain is a novel of rare brightness and clarity, concise and yet capacious: it illuminates the meeting of two extraordinary women like a shaft of sunlight -- IMOGEN HERMES GOWAR, author of Women's Prize-shortlisted THE MERMAID AND MRS HANCOCK Magnificent, bold and compelling . It was after this that Jesus Christ appeared, sitting on the edge of my bed, very handsome and clad in a mantle of purple silk. And so sche dede and schewyd hir the grace that God put in hir sowle of compunccyon, contricyon, swetnesse and devocyon, compassyon wyth holy meditacyon and hy contemplacyon, and ful many holy spechys and dalyawns that owyr Lord spak to hir sowle, and many wondirful revelacyons whech sche schewyd to the ankres to wetyn yf ther wer any deceyte in hem, for the ankres was expert in swech thyngys and good cownsel cowd gevyn. While MacKenzie draws on the lives and writings of two actual women—Julian of Norwich and her Revelations of Divine Love and Margery Kempe and her eponymous memoirs—what she conjured up from those sources reads like a student's attempt at producing a paraphrased summary of a primary source.