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The Gargoyle

Andrew Davidson

Publisher: Doubleday

Pub. Date: August 5, 2008

ISBN-13: 9780385524940

480pp

Book Room Review

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Back Page Summary

The narrator of The Gargoyle (who remains nameless) is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

Book Room Review

The first thing I want to say about The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson is that I predict it will be a huge success. The second is that it’s not that bold of a prediction to suggest this because this story is unique, the writing is excellent, and it offers a great love story.

The Gargoyle starts with a punch. The descriptions of the narrator and his car accident, the burns he suffers, and the recovery process for third degree burns are so vivid I was squirming while reading it. Andrew Davidson makes you feel the narrator’s pain. But we soon come to learn his pain is not only on the outside. Marianne is an intriguing character who seems on the brink of sanity and that is the whole dilemma of the novel. What is so compelling about The Gargoyle for me are the love stories that Marianne tells the narrator through the course of the book. They were each touching in their own right. They all come together and share in the final love story of The Gargoyle, which is the narrator finally coming to love himself. My favorite passage is from page 371:

“What an unexpected reversal of fate: only after my skin was burned away did I finally become able to feel. Only after I was born into physical repulsiveness did I come to glimpse the possibilities of the heart: I accepted this atrocious face and abominable body because they were forcing me to overcome the limitations of who I am, while my previous body allowed me to hide them.”

Thankfully, we can learn his lesson and not have to suffer through third degree burns to get it, but instead lay in the comfort of our homes reading the marvelous novel, The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson.

Book Room Grade

A

Review Posted: July 9, 2008

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