Dayspring - Anthony Oliveira
Read: May 2025
This was such an interesting book. It's about Jesus and one of the disciples (I can't remember which one, but I did have it figured out when I was reading it), having a gay romance. It flips between very biblical prose and time period, to like a modern AU where they are teenagers in high school together. It's very strange since usually I read spec fic and histories, which are not generally outside the norms for prose and structure. And I do mean structure in the literal structure of the print on the page situation. Most pages aren't full of text at all. But that works for this and the subject matter honestly. Oliveira was great for that.
I cannot imagine the the mainline conservative christian people were at all pleased with this. I didn't - and won't - look into any of the controversy Dayspring wrought. But I imagine it was quite rage inducing exercise for them. As a queer person who was raised Catholic, the beauty and wonder of this book was not lost on me. There is something undeniably potent about it. And naturally I was reading it during Easter season, so well timed me! Actually, I had to put it down because I was overdosing on christianity from that, and came back to it afterwards. What I'll say is that this version of Jesus is a version I could get behind. It's such a different and radical depiction from what I was told and shown growing up. It made me smile. Of course this is at the bottom of it, a love story. Which is cute, but everyone I think knows what happens to Jesus in the end, so it was also sad. Bit of a celebrate the love now, because it will end type of thing. Which I think was one of the points. Not the only one, but one of them.
Info: Strange Light; 2024
