Absolution

by Ramona Meisel

Every revolution has a price.

Absolution is a modern retelling of the Last Days of Christ, set in a fictive, dystopian Syria. The novella is told with raw emotions and an gut-wrenching prose. It contains different POV’s, mainly through the eyes of Mariam, Judah and Yeshua, as well as the gospel of Matthew, John, Mark and Luke - interludes that include newspaper articles, script plays and more. The twelve apostles are not all male; some are female, one is genderless and one is genderfluid. It is an LGBTQ+ novel with action, thriller, conspiracy and grunge elements that grab the story of Jesus’ last seven days on earth, and flip it around.

Genres: Poetry

Unknown Binding

First published March 31, 2018

About the author

Ramona Meisel is an artist, writer and mythology nerd living in Germany. She’s a strange human hybrid of mended bones and a soul ripped apart at the edges. Her tongue is sharp enough to cut and her mind keen enough to bleed. When she’s not haunting the net she’s perfectly content to lose time in prose and poetry.

Reviews

[Cinnia Literary Raccoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather unique retelling of the last days of Jesus that I've been waiting to read for a few years now. It reminds me of a cross between Jesus Christ Superstar and a poetic meditation on the Gospels, if that makes sense. I had something of a Ramona Meisel phase back in 2016 or so and voraciously read everything she had written at the time, except for Absolution, which wasn't available to purchase in my country as of yet. Like much of her writing, it is filled with what I term "Meiselisms" in its descriptions that tend to either entice readers or make them realize the style is not quite their cup of tea.

Whatever. I still find her words beautiful and strange, though I think my voracious Meisel-reading phase is largely over.

As for the four stars instead of five, there are occasional typos and grammatical errors that distract from the reading experience. I know Meisel's first language isn't English, but it was enough to kick me out of the book a few times, so I thought it would be worth mentioning.

[Dev · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so good! I really loved the writing style and the whole thing was very grand and emotional [and that's coming from an atheist lol]. I think the author did a really great job of updating the story for modern times and keeping everything very in character while also introducing more women and lgbt+ people into the story. I also loved how she used the gospels - telling the same event several times but with newspaper articles, video descriptions, or journal entries - because that's how the actual gospels are. They tell basically the same story but some have different scenes or focus on different elements. A really engaging story, I had forgotten how beautiful this author's prose was!

[Lucia · Rating 3 out of 5]

ramona meisel is an excellent writer and i was excited to get my hands on a pdf of this book. but she struggled to capture me in a multitude of ways. when the book finished, i hadn't even felt like i'd completed the rising action. this isn't to say that meisel is a bad author-- her poetry is fantastic. i own a much treasured copy of sunblind. and some of her beautiful metaphors and thought-inspiring language made its way into absolution. but it still feels like a rough draft. there were a lot of words that meant nothing and a lot of characters in whom i did not feel invested. meisel is a excellent writer, but this doesn't feel like one of her works.

tl;dr: cool concept; poorly executed.

[Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible, modern retelling of Jesus's last days that had me up all night trying to finish. I don't think any review I could write could do justice to the beauty of the author's prose and this story.

[woodswit · Rating 5 out of 5]

The beauty. The power. I actually read this back in January and just realised it was on Goodreads. SO GODDAMN. GOOD.

[Kash · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was amazing and heartbreaking. Every bit of it was so carefully crafted. The characters are the best part of it.
Here's my review in Spanish: http://somuchmorethanpaper.blogspot.c...