In 1413, two of the most important women in the history of literature met. They were the anchoress (or religious hermit) Julian of Norwich, whose Revelations of Divine Love is the earliest surviving book written in English by a woman, and Margery Kempe, the Christian mystic whose dictated autobiography is the first ever to have been written in English by man or woman. 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.
As alternating first-person accounts of their lives reveal, they could scarcely be more different. Kempe is a mayor’s daughter, fashion-conscious and often comically unfiltered. Having wed a man entirely lacking in business sense and borne 14 children, she’s also exhausted. When Christ first appears before her he is the “handsomest” man she’s ever seen; their subsequent encounters are intimate, physical – carnal, even.
