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The Gargoyle is a difficult book to review and summarize. The plot crosses many genre lines and deals with many issues. That said, here is my attempt.

The novel begins with the narrator getting in a car accident after bingeing on liquor and cocaine. He has a bottle of bourbon between his legs at the time and him and his car go up in flames. He is burned over most of his body and is in a hospital burn unit for a very long time.

Marianne Engel, a famous sculptress of gargoyles, shows up on his unit one day and tells him that they were lovers in medieval Germany. She claims that he was a mercenary and that she was a scribe. He doesn’t really much faith in this claim, but is mesmerized by Marianne.

When he was ready to be released from the hospital he was still going to need continuous care. Normally he would have been sent to a rehab centre, however Marianne volunteers to take him into her home. She has the resources for him to get the care he needs.

This book is richly layered with many themes and symbolism. It is not a book to be read quickly, but rather slowly and contemplatively. One of the major themes is of redemption and there are many references to Dante’s Inferno in it.

This book is not for the faint of heart. The burns that the nameless narrator goes through and many other aspects are vividly outlined. Though I don’t normally like a book with much gore, it is needed in this book. It’s not there to purposely shock the reader, but to inform.

I really liked this book. It has a lot to keep the reader interested and is well researched and written. The stories that Marianne tells are very engaging and were my favorite part of the book.

I only have one complaint. Throughout the book the author refers to Marianne by her full name, Marianne Engel. Her entire name appears several times on the same page. Though this doesn’t ruin the book, it is a distraction, at least for me. I have no idea if this was intentional, though for what purpose I can’t fathom or if is was in need of better editing. That said, I did read an advance reading copy, so maybe in the final version published this was fixed. I sure hope so.

I highly recommend The Gargoyle and look forward to reading more from Andrew Davidson.

4/5

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Pages: 468
First Published: Aug. 5, 2008
Genre: Magical realism
Rating: 4.5/5

First sentence:

Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love.

Comments: I think that is an amazing opening line. How could you not read on after that? The process of reading the book was pure joy from the first page. The writing exquisite and the details of description superb. This is a difficult book to summarize. I’ve heard the book termed “a fantasy love story” but I’m more apt to calling it magical realism. The story starts off with a class one b*stard. He’s in the pornography business, started in front of the camera and now owns his own company. He leads a life of debauchery: women, cocaine, alcohol and sex. He crashes his car (completely his fault) and suffers a severe burn all over his body. He ends up in the hospital in the burn ward and the detailed treatment suffered by burn victims was disturbing. This section of the book was incredibly difficult to read the description of the man being burnt alive was amazingly excruciating to read, as was the medical treatments which these victims must endure.

An on again off again psychiatric patient visits the man and starts telling him stories of medieval times that eventually turn into stories of the two of them. He in a previous life and her still living after all these seven hundred years. She must spend this time giving away her twenty-seven hearts until he can except her last heart.

I loved the medieval stories. They started off fairy tale-ish but turned into a side story that was just as compelling, perhaps even more so, than the main modern time plot. The man eventually leaves the hospital and moves in with this woman, Marianne Engel. She is a sculptor of gargoyles and a love story of sorts progresses.

The narrator deals with his own personal demons in the form of a metaphorical snake of pain living in his spine. While the woman he lives with and cares for pursues her centuries old quest by carving gargoyles with little regard to her health. In my mind the author leaves the story open to personal interpretation. Is Marianne really seven hundred years old, are her tales true and do she and the narrator share a love of centuries or is she simply insane, a psychiatric patient whose condition continues to worsen. While I admit I enjoyed never really knowing whether Marianne was sane or not, I did form my own opinion of the answer and must say the ending left me feeling underwhelmed. Hence my 4.5 rating. The ending is plausible and the author is certainly entitled to choose such an ending but it did leave me feeling let down after the wonderful journey through the rest of the book. I had hoped things would end differently. A simply delicious read which certainly deserves the current hype and I would not be surprised to see this on this years Governor General’s Award shortlist.

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)