Micro Review 1 (2023)

 

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy Upon My Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie (Bloomsbury Books)

2023 has got off to a strong start and I've had a run of good books which is cheering. I did read this one at the end of 2022 but as it is officially published this week now seems the time to talk about it.

This is a shortish book that I was always going to fall in love with as it is set in Norwich/Norfolk and about strong, literary, women,

The book tells the stories of Margery Kempe, a Norfolk woman who is considered to have written (dictated) the first autobiography in the English language, and Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchoress whose book the Revelations of Devine Love is the first book in English by a woman.

In this book we learn about both of their lives, and their growing and changing faiths as well as Mackenzie imagining how a meeting between them would have played out.

From past jobs, projects and reading I knew a little about each woman but through this books I know feel I know much more about both them, and Norfolk during the late 1300s/ early 1400s.  I also want to find out more so this has to be a sign of just how good I found the book!

Micro Review 39

 

The Long Field by Pamela Petro (Little Toller Books)

Review copy supplied by the publisher

The Long Field of Petro's title isn't a literal field, rather is is the literal translation of the Welsh term hiraeth and the book is a meditation on how a place or country can worm its way into your life and leave you 'homesick' for this location.

Unlike true homesickness hiraeth isn't necessarily about your physical home but is more about the idea of place, and while I've not spent any amount of time in Wales to experience the same feelings as Petro there were definitely parts of her feelings that I understood instantly.

Being in lock down in the spring of 2020 and then the winter of 2021 I realised just how important watery landscapes are to me, and until we found local walks that encompassed river scenes I was definitely pining for water in a way that I'd not really experienced before.

Equally in 2017 (and to a lesser extent in 2014) when I got to spend time in the Rocky Mountains I instantly felt a connection and love of the landscape that I'd not experienced before. Since returning to the flatlands of East Anglia I've felt the pull of the mountains in a way that hiraeth as used by Petro can explain.

I very much enjoyed this exploration of Petro's life and hiraeth and pass on many thanks to Little Toller for supplying me with a reading copy.