About the book: For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain (2023) is an astounding debut, both epic and intimate, about grief, trauma, revelation, and the hidden lives of women by a major new talent.
In the year of 1413, two women meet for the first time in the city of Norwich.
Margery has left her fourteen children and husband behind to make her journey. 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.
Julian, an anchoress, has not left Norwich, nor the cell to which she has been confined, for twenty-three years. She has told no one of her own visions – and knows that time is running out for her to do so.
The two women have stories to tell one another. Stories about girlhood, motherhood, sickness, loss, doubt and belief; revelations more powerful than the world is ready to hear. Their meeting will change everything.
Sensual, vivid and humane, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain cracks history open to reveal the lives of two extraordinary women.
For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain is the winner of the Scottish Book Awards - First Book of the Year 2023. It was selected as a book of the year by the Sunday Times, Guardian, Scotsman and Irish Times.
About the author: Victoria MacKenzie is a fiction writer and poet. She is the winner of the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award and the inaugural Emerging Writer Award from Moniack Mhor. She was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, as well as being awarded prestigious writing residencies in Scotland, Finland and Australia. She teaches creative writing for the Open College of the Arts. She lives in Scotland. Visit her website at victoriamackenzie.net or on Twitter at @forthygreatpain
Rating: 5/5
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