Novels Now

Andrew Davidson

465 page

While driving in his car after binging on cocaine and bourbon, the narrator of The Gargoyle sees a vision of flaming arrows and swerving to avoid them, gets into a horrific car crash that results in him being severely burned. This would be a terrible fate for any person but the narrator had formerly made his living as a p-rn star and later a producer. Now, life as he knew it is over.

While laying in the hospital and contemplating how he will end his life, he is visited by a strange woman named Marianne Engel. She tells him mysterious stories about their intertwined lives and they begin to build a relationship. But as he begins to learn more about Marianne and her life as sculptress finds that he has more questions than answers. He does, however, learn lessons about himself:

I was born with all the advantages that a monster never had, and I chose to disregard them all. Now my armor had melted away and been replaced with a raw wound. The line of beauty that I had used to separate myself from people was gone, replaced by a new barrier - ugliness - that kept people away from me, whether I liked it or not. One might expect the result to be the same, but that was not entirely true. While I was now surrounded by far fewer people than before, they were far better people. -The Gargoyle pg 370

This was honestly one of those books that I went back and forth on the entire time I was reading it. At one point, I really liked it a lot and at another point, I didn’t care for it all.

On the one hand, I really didn’t care for the more graphic aspects of the narrator’s career choice but on the other hand, I can see how it was relevant to the storyline of redemption.

On the one hand, I loved the stories that Marianne told that took place all over the world but on the other hand, I found the spirituality in the story convoluted and the romance between Marianne and the narrator bizarre.

In the end, I guess I wound up in the middle. I don’t consider it a waste of time but it won’t be making my list of favorites for the year. (3/5)