has ALL you need!

A community for book lovers to create their own bookshelves, share and explore books.

Google Preview

• 1 person find this helpful

  • 

  • Ci sono volte in cui credi di sapere dove vanno a parare certi libri. Lo credi perché fai come con le persone, se qualcuno assomiglia a qualcun altro, sei portato a pensare che prima o poi si comporterà come quel qualcun altro.

    A volte ti sbagli. A volte è una sorpresa molto piacevole. Questa ... Continue

    Ci sono volte in cui credi di sapere dove vanno a parare certi libri. Lo credi perché fai come con le persone, se qualcuno assomiglia a qualcun altro, sei portato a pensare che prima o poi si comporterà come quel qualcun altro.

    A volte ti sbagli. A volte è una sorpresa molto piacevole. Questa è una di quelle volte.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― 3owin (eowin) said on Nov 24, 2009 | Add your feedback

• 1 person find this helpful

  • 

  • Fascinate, terrible, romántico y triste, pero sin dramatismos a pesar de lo narrado. Protagonistas atipicos que me han tenido intrigada y atrapada hasta el final, sobre todo el narrador, un cinico al que acabé adorando.
    La historia me parece inquietante y no sabes muy bien donde va a acabar.Continue

    Fascinate, terrible, romántico y triste, pero sin dramatismos a pesar de lo narrado. Protagonistas atipicos que me han tenido intrigada y atrapada hasta el final, sobre todo el narrador, un cinico al que acabé adorando.
    La historia me parece inquietante y no sabes muy bien donde va a acabar.
    Diferente y absolutamente recomendable.
    Gracias Cora!

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― LadyH said on Jul 24, 2009 | Add your feedback

• 1 person find this helpful

  • 

  • The book starts out with quite an interesting unusual story and initially keeps your attention quite well. However, it gets quite tedious after a bit and often feels as if the author just tried to fill the pages with the same stuff over and over again and, in the end ran out of steam.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Lunarossa said on Jun 16, 2009 | 1 feedback| 1 feedback

• .

  • 

  • Beautifully written, engaging, with the added bonus of being both original and completely mad. If you like all your questions answered then this isn't the book for you. If you're looking for something lyrical and out of the ordinary, go and read it. Outstanding as a first novel.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― MrsFidelius said on Nov 25, 2009 | Add your feedback

• .

  • 

  • An amazing first novel from Andrew Davidson, his descriptive writing is incredibly realistic and the opening scenes of the novel, where the protagonist survives (if you can call it survival) a car crash are particularly gruesome.
    Did I enjoy this novel, well to be perfectly honest even after re ... Continue

    An amazing first novel from Andrew Davidson, his descriptive writing is incredibly realistic and the opening scenes of the novel, where the protagonist survives (if you can call it survival) a car crash are particularly gruesome.
    Did I enjoy this novel, well to be perfectly honest even after reading all 500 pages I am still not really sure. I know this does not make sense but novels with an allegorical tale are rarely if ever a genre I read from choice. So why did I read it, one it was a recommendation and secondly I found it strangely fascinating!

    The unnamed protagonist suffers the most horrendous burns apparently not for the first time in his existence as this story crosses the boundaries of time. The love of his ‘lives’ Marianne Engel appears at his bedside to help him survive his modern day burns ordeal. The stories of their previous love affairs are narrated to him by Marianne and interspersed amongst the present day events and their growing relationship.
    In this life the protagonist is or rather was before his accident not a very pleasant young man, a pornographer and drug addict. Now he looks like a monster as well as behaving like one, so he plans to commit suicide as soon as he is released from hospital. That is until Marianne arrives at his hospital bedside to befriend him, a strange and possibly psychotic woman, a sculptress who claims they were lovers in previous lives. Our narrator although is intrigued by her tales of their previous love affairs in lives in 14C Germany, Medieval Japan, Viking Iceland, Italy and England.

    Already an international literary sensation, The Gargoyle is being called a Dante’s Inferno for modern times, which will have you believing in the impossible. Maybe, maybe not! Read it for yourself and see what you think.
    I am giving this the full 5* not necessarily because I liked it that much but because I think it is an extremely well written novel.

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― Lindyloumac said on Oct 31, 2009 | Add your feedback

• .

  • Love is as strong as death, as hard as hell

  • The book starts with a horrific car accident after which the main protagonist finds himself in a hospital burns ward. During his year long hospital stay, a woman enters his life and a love story spanning centuries unfolds.
    The book is well researched and very detailed, but still leaves quite a ... Continue

    The book starts with a horrific car accident after which the main protagonist finds himself in a hospital burns ward. During his year long hospital stay, a woman enters his life and a love story spanning centuries unfolds.
    The book is well researched and very detailed, but still leaves quite a few questions open…

    

    Is this helpful?

• ― wgeddert said on Oct 18, 2009 | Add your feedback

An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time.

On a burn ward, a man lies between living and dying, so disfigured that no one from his past life would even recognize him. His only comfort comes from imagining various inventive ways to end his misery. Then a woman named Marianne Engel walks into his hospital room, a wild-haired, schizophrenic sculptress on the lam from the psych ward upstairs, who insists that she knows him – that she has known him, in fact, for seven hundred years. She remembers vividly when they met, in another hospital ward at a convent in medieval Germany, when she was a nun and he was a wounded mercenary left to die. If he has forgotten this, he is not to worry: she will prove it to him.

And so Marianne Engel begins to tell him their story, carving away his disbelief and slowly drawing him into the orbit and power of a word he'd never uttered: love.

Groups with this in collection

Historical Fiction Lovers (150)