A sensitive, luminous, meditative and powerful fictional portrayal of the life of Julian of Norwich - the mother, mystic, and radical. There’s a lot of spiritual strength in this fictional Julian: an unusual woman with a need for me-time and a direct relationship with the Divine. I was reminded of the old Chinese curse – May you live in interesting times – when reading this book. Poor Julian not only endured the death of her father from bubonic plague as a young child, which completely changed the family’s dynamic, but also had to cope with the loss of her own young daughter and husband in another devastating wave of the same terrible illness. I read of her struggles to come to terms with these heart-wrenching bereavements, conscious that I was viewing this quite differently in a post-Covid world. Gilbert’s by contrast – is based on the idea that Julian passed her writings in secret to some Norwich based lay sister with whom she had stayed prior to becoming an anchoress, and that the book we are reading is her life story, told verbally in secret to an early confessor (whose willingness to give credibility to her early “showings” encourages her into her life of contemplation) who later writes them down and passed them to her later confessor who edits and compiles them (although assuming they will never be read).

the first pestilence rages across the land. The young Julian of Norwich encounters the strangeness of death: first her father, then later her husband and her child. When she falls ill herself, she encounters mystical visions that bring comfort and concern. But in the midst of suspicion and menace, when the Church is actively condemning heretics, Julian is not safe.Once I did start reading, two other red flags popped up. First, there were hints early on in the book that there was going to be some anachronistic feminist sermonizing superimposed onto this story. The second red flag was that the prose was so ridiculously flowery as to be unreadable. Fortunately, once you got about ten percent of the way in, the over-the-top prose was toned way down. I am guessing that the author simply rewrote that first part over and over again trying to make it ever more "beautiful" and "literary." In her event at the Intellectual Forum on Thursday 20 April, College Visiting Fellow Dr Claire Gilbert will speak about her fictional autobiography of Julian of Norwich, asking: what can a 14th century woman writer's story teach us about our own lives? As one of the medieval mystics I studied as a special subject in my Oxford theology degree. What most drew you to Julian? At nineteen, her mother wants her to marry, but Julian doesn’t want to obey a man and bear children. She prefers solitude. Her mother insists on her meeting Martin, a wool merchant. Julian does and realizes that beneath his strong appearance there is tenderness. She thinks the city will be bearable when she is with him. This is a powerful read, the women are strong and desire to be independent of men. Julian always had the desire to be alone, she has a supportive network of friends, a sister hood who assist her with her calling. There is so much to review in this stunning book. I learnt so much about having a strong faith and a calling and although I did not fully understand I found it absolutely fascinating.

But, we're not meant to judge books by their covers, right? So I won't. But it's hard to pinpoint exactly how I felt about it upon finishing, as along the way I found myself alternately exasperated and absorbed. Somehow, I struggled with Gilbert’s depiction of Julian before she became an anchorite. She brings Julian alive, emphasizing her humanity, and embodiment as a real person grounded in a time and place that formed her as concretely as her spiritual experiences did. However, her character felt removed from reality, somehow always separate from, and dissatisfied with her life (which, granted, wasn’t great). I wanted to meet a Julian that could delight in motherhood and delight in the life of solitude, seeing both equally, as places where she can encounter God and be formed spiritually, rather than seeing the grit of life as an obstacle to her higher, more intellectual and spiritual pursuits.I can already tell I will read this book again. It would be delightful as an audiobook with a good voice for Julian in her later years. Gilbert does not use quotation marks, which peeves me, but she does set dialogue off in its own paragraphs and indented, which appeases me. She also makes too little use of commas, but I warmed to her style over time, remembering that she is creating a fictional third text written by a woman in early fifteenth-century England. This is a difficult topic – writing about a hermit in a room, also writing. I doff my hat to Gilbert’s chutzpah. Yet in truth, as I’ve said, this is a book about faith. Julian’s story is the means to that end. Which is handy, because Julian herself, in her ethics and outlook, reads uncannily like an intelligent, religious feminist of today. This contemporality of thought is undoubtedly the book’s greatest failing. After the death of her father in the first great pestilience, Julian finds herself wanting to retreat from everyday life. Her mother lives alone in a small cottage but Julian is expected to marry and does so. Her husband is kind and Julian becomes a mother but both are taken from her by the next wave of pestilence. Despite having an offer of marriage Julian wishes to live a contemplative life but a serious illness leads to powerful visions and Julian realises she wants to dedicate herself to God. When an opportunity to become an anchoress presents itself, Julian chooses to this and lives for many years, accompanied only by a servant. Despite opposition from the heretic-seeking Church, Julian commits her visions to parchment. Julian] was the bright star in the dry as dust theology degree." - Dr Claire Gilbert, Visiting Fellow