The Gargoyle | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrew Davidson
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  154 reviews
Sales Rank: 3126
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0385524943
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780385524940
ASIN: 0385524943
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time.
The narrator of The Gargoyle 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 suicideafor 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 lifeaand, 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 completeaand her time on earth will be finished.
Already an international literary sensation, The Gargoyle is an Inferno for our time. It will have you believing in the impossible.
Andrew Davidson Talks About Becoming a Writer
 Some of what follows is true.
When I was about seven, I had a turtle named Stripe. I decided, because I liked my turtle and Jacques Cousteau, that I wanted to be a marine biologist. This ambition lasted until I was ten years old, when I spent a year gazing into the abyss, hoping that the abyss would not gaze back at me. At eleven, I longed for a master to teach me the secrets of the ninja, but the teacher did not appear; this probably means that as a student I was not ready. As I entered my teens, I set my heart upon becoming a professional hockey player. On weekend nights, the final game at the local arena ended around 10 p.m. but the icemaker was unable to leave the building until about midnight, as he had to clean the dressing rooms and do maintenance. I bribed him with presents of Aqua Velva aftershave to let me play alone on the rink until he headed home. Despite my devotion, I never developed the skills to make it off the small-town rink and into the big leagues. My dream shattered, at sixteen I started to spend more time writing. I began by changing the lyrics to Doors songs. I rewrote "Break On Through" so that it became "Live to Die": "Soldier in the forest / dodging bullets thick / only took one / to make him cry / All of us just live to die." Clearly, writing was my future.
I soon realized that, since I still had no authorial voice of my own, I should at least imitate better poets than Jim Morrison. Soon I was word-raping Leonard Cohen, e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath, William Blake, and John Milton. After writing much abusively derivative poetry, I moved onto stage plays written in a mockery of the style of Tennessee Williams, which also didn’t work out so well. Next, I tried to put baby in a corner, until it was explained to me that nobody puts baby in a corner. Following this, I produced short stories that would have been much better if they were much shorter. Then, screenplays that even Alan Smithee wouldn’t direct.
Somewhere along the way, I managed to get a degree in English Literature; this was strange, as I thought I was studying cardiology. Undaunted, off to Vancouver Film School I went, but naturally not to study film. Instead, I took the new media course, because there was this thing called the internet that was just taking off. I also spent a fair amount of time using digital editing software for video and audio. An example project: I slowed down the final movement to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, looped it backwards, put in a heavy drumbeat, and end up with a funeral dirge. "Ode to Joy"? I think not. "Ode to Bleakness" is more like it; I was very deep, and showed it by destroying joy.
After this course finished, I had tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, and could no longer avoid getting a job. I soon discovered, in no uncertain terms, that work is no fun. I stuck it out for as long as I could, which was way less than a lifetime. As my thirtieth birthday approached, I became incredibly aware that I had never lived abroad, so I moved to Japan.
I had no idea if I would like Japan, but I vowed to stick it out for a year. I did, and then another year, and another, and another, and another. In the beginning, I worked as a kind of substitute teacher of English, covering stints in classrooms that needed a temporary instructor. I lived in fifteen different cities during my first two years, traveling from the northern island of Hokkaido all the way down to the southern island of Okinawa. It was a great introduction to the country, but eventually the constant relocation became too much. I got a job in a Tokyo office, writing English lessons for Japanese learners on the internet. I lived in the big city for three years, and loved it: hooray for sushi, hooray for sumo, and hooray for cartoon mascots.
While in Japan, I entertained myself by writing and, having already mangled poetry, short stories, stage plays and screenplays, I thought it was time to give a novel a shot. A strange thing happened: I found that I don’t write like other people when it comes to novelsaor at least, none of which I know. It’s true that I’ve read comparisons of my novel to a number of other booksaThe Name of the Rose, The English Patient, The Shadow of the Windabut I haven’t read any of them. (To my great shame, really, and I suppose I should. Since they are my supposed influences, I should become familiar with them. I’ll appear more intelligent in interviews.)
I liked writing The Gargoyle, and I think I’ll write another novel. If I can, I’ll make up new characters and a new plot. That’s my plan.
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 149 more reviews...
A main character you will love to hate or hate to love, perhaps both January 4, 2009
I laughed and cried as I read this book. You will see the worst parts of yourself form entire broken characters, which, in turns, will make you squirm uncomfortably and make you feel less alone. My only complaint is that often the references are obscure and, left unexplained, make the reader feel like they should have known what was meant and in not knowing, he is an idiot. Perhaps it could be called literary snobbery.
Still, it's worth a read. I loved the main character, despite his bitter sarcasm (or maybe because of it).
 Not a Romance but a Love Story Nonetheless January 1, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I can't remember when I've had such a hard time writing a book review as I've had with this review The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. On the surface, this is a simple story about the physical recovery of a severely burned pornographer and his relationship with a mentally ill sculptor, but as the book unfolds, it becomes clear that the book is so much more. The book starts out almost completely as a cliche--an evil pornographer is severely burned and realizes he has nothing left to live for. The characters are completely one dimensional--the pornographer/narrator as the villain, the crazy artist, the aloof medical staff and the pretentious psychologist. However, so slowly that I didn't even notice it was happening, the characters and the book became so much more that by the end, the characters were well developed, believable and likable.
The farther I got into this book, the harder I found it to put down. While not a romance in the traditional sense of the word, it is a love story--a book about the all-encompassing, transformational nature of true love.
Bottom line is I liked this book. As I finished reading it, I just had to put it down and think about what I had read. Even now, more than a week after I finished it, I'm still going back through some of the passages in my mind, puzzling over the deeper meaning therein. It's the kind of book that makes you think and also makes you examine some of the elements of your own life and your relationships with others. I will be very interested to see more of Mr. Davidson's work in the future.
 Quite a long slog December 31, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The first chapter is brilliant. After that, it slowly goes downhill. Down and down and down, into utter stupidity. The last half is incredibly boring.
Could not finish December 28, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you like a book that goes back and forth from the past to the present from one paragraph to the next you might like this book. I however, did not like the switching back and forth. I could not finish this book sorry to say. I think it is a good story line, but to confusing to keep track of it all for me. I like my books to transport me to a place, but not keep me on the red eye.
Beautiful and engrossing! December 23, 2008
If Andrew continues to write books like this he will, without a doubt, be one of the most praised writers of his time. Even thought I didn't particularly like the ending the passion and intensity of the rest of the book made up for it. Do yourself a favor and read it. This was a masterpiece that few modern writers can achieve. The author has a lot to live up too with his next book, but if this is any indication he will surpass it easily.
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