I, Julian: The fictional autobiography of Julian of Norwich

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Yet first through her visions, then through her later years of contemplation she gains a deep and abiding sense of God's love. This rather wonderful fictional autobiography was published to coincide with the 650th anniversary of Julian first experiencing, in May 1373, the series of 16 visions she wrote about in Revelations of Divine Love. Everything has dissolved, even the little word, and there is only God beholding in me and I am no one and no where.

But she does not align with them and she does not allow them to hijack her renown and rapport with the masses. The sharp green new leaves of the birches shimmering in the light, the intoxicating smell of the may, its frothy blossom bud-bursting on the blackthorn, the new ferns unfolding, the springy grass under the horses’ hoofs, this twisted tree trunk and the ivy that clings to it, the rich fresh green that is emerging everywhere. It is as if we have finally found the lost autobiography of one of the medieval world's most important women.We see Julian’s early life from 1347: childhood, the great Plague, death of her father, her marriage, recurrence of plague, death of Julian’s husband and daughter, and her rejection of the prospect of remarriage. Throughout her book, Ms Gilbert uses the device of Thomas as Julian’s interlocutor; much of the tale is related by Julian in ‘conversation’ with him. Words failed as Love itself was set free in the encounter, melted from the ice that kept it prisoner. Julian's life is touched by loss, through pestilence, death and her own decision to live as an anchorite, locked into a cell attached to a church for decades. Written with profound insight, spiritual and psychological, and a rare sensitivity to the everyday world of the fourteenth century, it is a brilliantly illuminating companion to one of the greatest works of spiritual writing in English.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Come to encounters with people and places and nature and God and pain and suffering with an open heart and a welcoming smile and a willingness to learn. From the author of Miles to Go before I Sleep comes I, Julian, the account of a medieval woman who dares to tell her own story, battling grief, plague, the church and societal expectations to do so.

In writing Revelations of Divine Love, Dame Julian became the first known female author in the English language.

However, I found the accounts of her visions and the theological discussions less interesting and found myself skipping through some of them.There are also vivid descriptions of the multiple miscarriages – ‘13 graves in my heart’ – suffered by Julian’s friend, Isabel. As time passes, she must overcome the departure and passing of her ‘minders’: those who love her, including her maid Alice, her confessor Thomas, and her benefactor the Countess of Sussex. Very little that is solid fact is known about her life, but of her existence and writings there is no doubt. It meant I knew the text really well; I was secure in my understanding that there was an ecological dimension and that her method is porosity.