If these names are familiar to you, you’ll know that they were both English mystics of the medieval period and were also both authors. This 160-page novel tells the story of two medieval women who existed at the same time, both of whom wrote two valuable texts that were almost lost to time — one of which was the first known book written in English by a woman. There was a time, until relatively recently, when pre-Reformation mystics, who were predominantly female, were dismissed as anomalies, eccentrics, curiosities or just plain bonkers. But are these women, already deprived of the right to public speech and influence, to give up their very thoughts, too? 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.

God and the devyl ben evyrmor contraryows, and thei schal nevyr dwellyn togedyr in on place, and the devyl hath no powyr in a mannys sowle. 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. The stories of the two women only converge towards the end of the book in a meeting which did take place according to Margery herself in The Book of Margery Kempe, but maybe not exactly as it is described here.I must admit that religious fervour or even fanaticism are somewhat alien concepts to me, so I am probably not this author’s ideal reader. Here you might be saying to yourself well, here's the medievalist being grouchy and nitpicky, and on a certain level you're not wrong. In "Abbi pietà del mio piccolo dolore", Victoria MacKenzie dà spazio a entrambi gli aspetti -quello cristiano e quello umano- di due donne che vissero nell'Inghilterra quattrocentesca: Margery Kempe e Julian di Norwich.

Their encounter, in Norwich at the cell in which Julian had by then been willingly incarcerated for more than 20 years, provides the climax to Victoria MacKenzie’s transfixing debut novel.Maybe this is it – the Canterbury Tales trope of a very human attitude to religion, where Friars are openly lewd and everyone laughs about the corruption and hypocrisy of the nevertheless ubiquitous Church.

Julian, an anchoress, has not left Norwich, nor the cell to which she has been confined, for twenty- three years. Two female medieval mystics, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, are the twin protagonists of Mackenzie’s debut. I would perhaps like to have seen more of Julian's theological wrestlings, although they do come through in the powerful end section when the two meet. 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. About Julian considerably less is known, allowing MacKenzie to imagine for her a beloved husband and baby daughter, both lost to the plague.It was cool to see their stories draw out in parallel until they finally meet at the end, and how different their lives were but connected by their visions and their faith. While both wrestle with their relationship to God, I found that this novella both evoked how serious and important these questions were in the late medieval period, and had resonance for modern readers who don’t consider themselves to be religious.

When neighbours and family turned on her, she became more and more certain that they would see her in heaven seated with the Trinity, the Virgin, Mary Magdalene and the Apostles. Many were the holy dialogues shared between the anchorite and the woman through their communion in the love of our Lord Jesus Christ during the days they spent together. MacKenzie's sumptuous debut For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain is a beautiful novel, both epic and intimate, about grief, trauma, revelation, hidden lives and the genesis of women’s writing. As the child of two psychiatric nurses I certainly noticed how so many seriously unwell people, including many of my parents’ patients were drawn to the more Gothic aspects of Catholic practice – songs about sheltering in the wounds of Christ, being bathed in blood and so forth. If you’re new to these figures, you might be captivated by their bizarre life stories and religious obsession, but I thought the bare telling was somewhat lacking in literary interest.

Seynt Powyl seyth that the Holy Gost askyth for us wyth mornynggys and wepyngys unspekable, that is to seyn, he makyth us to askyn and preyn wyth mornynggys and wepyngys so plentyuowsly that the terys may not be nowmeryd. Maybe if I was a more religious person myself I would have appreciated this book more, but I could still find a lot to interest me in this story of two medieval women whose different personalities and different journeys through life shape the nature of their relationships with God.