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The Gargoyle

By Andrew Davidson

(60)

| Others | 9781847671691

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Book Description

The nameless and beautiful narrator of The Gargoyle 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 wakes up in a burns ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned. His life is over - he is now a monster. But in fact it is only Continue

The nameless and beautiful narrator of The Gargoyle 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 wakes up in a burns ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned. His life is over - he is now a monster. But in fact it is only just beginning. One day, Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles, enters his life and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly burned mercenary and she was a nun and a scribe who nursed him back to health in the famed monastery of Engelthal. As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Greenland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life - and, finally, to love.

Critics

  • THE GARGOYLE by Andrew Davidson

    Review by Bonnie Brody (NOV 21, 2009) The Gargoyle is one of the most gripping novels I have ever read. I am not one to usually read books more than once and I can probably count on two hands those novels that I’ve read two or three times. This is my ... (read full critics)

    mostlyfiction published on Thu, 30 Sep 2010

  • The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson - Review by Waterstone's Books Quarterly Online

    Driving along a cliff-top freeway in a drug-induced haze, the narrator of The Gargoyle, a cynical, narcissistic pornographer, loses control of his car and plunges into a ravine. His former life burned away, along with most of his skin, he lies in a h ... (read full critics)

    wbqonline published on Wed, 29 Sep 2010

13 Reviews

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  • 1 person find this helpful

    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.

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    MrsFidelius said on Nov 25, 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.

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    Lunarossa said on Jun 16, 2009 | 1 feedback

  • A great literature about love and pain. It is in no way an easy book, but if one insists it till the end, a man's transition from ignorant to loving and caring can be seen.

    The story started from the narrator being severely burnt, and subsequently undergone a series of burnt treatments. Prior t ... (continue)

    A great literature about love and pain. It is in no way an easy book, but if one insists it till the end, a man's transition from ignorant to loving and caring can be seen.

    The story started from the narrator being severely burnt, and subsequently undergone a series of burnt treatments. Prior to the accident, the narrator was a good-looking guy making huge money from pornographic industry. With plenty of money and women, he was yet someone without a soul. The accident had sent him to Hell because his outlook became so weird that everyone would think he had done something wicked to bear such fate.

    The narrator was so desperate that he was formulating his suicide plan secretly in the hospital bed. He did not know that the accident brought him a new life with a mysterious psychiatric woman, Marianne Engel, who would enlighten his life with the meaning of love.

    Marianne regularly visited the narrator in the hospital. She told him that they were lovers in the medieval Germany and she had lived several hundreds years to reunite with him at present. Bit by bit, Marianne unfolded the past with the narrator, once again reminding him the true and unconditional love that existed between them. At the beginning the narrator was very resistant and treated her as having Manic Depression or Schizophrenia. However, when Marianne's love continued to be pure and overwhelming, the narrator found himself could not help but loved her back. He knew that everything was hard to believe, but he did believe, in particular the love that filled him. A key object in the story, an arrowhead, first brought the narrator as a mercenary to Marianne as a nun. It then separated them when she was forced to kill him in order to save his pain from the torture of his soldier head. Finally at the present, it brought her back for him to release her final heart.

    Another attractive part of the book were four old and touching stories told by Marianne and intertwined with her past and present. They happened in different places, but they were all about unconditional and unfailing love:-

    The Good Ironworker (Italy) - a loving husband insisted that he himself be infected and killed when his wife acquired a deadly disease

    The Woman on the Cliff (England) - a woman waiting for her husband's return at the foreshore. So persistent that the very spot of the cliff she stood for years fell apart

    The Glassblower's Apprentice (Japan) - a dilemma for Sei to choose between her father and her love. She gave up her voice and became a nun. She blew glass flowers and store all her love into them

    Siguror's Gift (Iceland) - a story about the unspeakable love between men. Siguror sacrificed himself for Einarr's son, although he knew he could never receive concrete open love in return

    I like the way the story developed and unfolded itself. It was a lesson about love and pain. It was also something about faith and believing.

    　

    "The most difficult thing about writing, I'm discovering, is not the act of constructing the sentences themselves. It's deciding what to put in, and where, and what to leave out."

    "I thought about her too much, and thinking stole time that could otherwise have been allotted to fearing debridement or formulating suicide plans."

    "The more you give away, the more you have."

    "I believe that if you do not listen to your heart in this matter, you will regret it forever."

    "If you cannot love the pain, you can at least love the lessons it teaches."

    "Hell is a choice because salvation is available to anyone who seeks it. The damned choose their fates, by deliberately hardening their hearts."

    　

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    Candy said on Jan 5, 2012 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

  • Simply addictive, you won't be able to put this down. Two incredible protagonists, so incomprehensible that they drag you into their own mystery and memories. It flows smoothly from beginning to end.
    I loved the stories that Marianne tells the Burned Man. Really inventive and evocative. I think one ... (continue)

    Simply addictive, you won't be able to put this down. Two incredible protagonists, so incomprehensible that they drag you into their own mystery and memories. It flows smoothly from beginning to end.
    I loved the stories that Marianne tells the Burned Man. Really inventive and evocative. I think one of the best novels I ever read.

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    Orsini Patrick said on Mar 7, 2011 | Add your feedback

  • One of my favourite books

    There are very few books I've ever re-read, and in the case of this one so quickly. I first read this when it had just come out and thought it was amazing, the story of redemption and love interwoven with a great story telling theme. It contains some elements I really enjoyed with references to Blak ... (continue)

    There are very few books I've ever re-read, and in the case of this one so quickly. I first read this when it had just come out and thought it was amazing, the story of redemption and love interwoven with a great story telling theme. It contains some elements I really enjoyed with references to Blake, Dante's Inferno and Japanese myths. I re-read it earlier this year and felt it had lost none of its impact. Brilliant.

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    AkiraNone said on Mar 2, 2011 | Add your feedback

  • An intriguing and elegant tangle of past and present.
    A unusual story that will leave you with a few unanswered questions, but that will be stuck in your head for a while.

    A great first novel!

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    RickyV said on Sep 21, 2010 | Add your feedback

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