The gargoyle

by
No cover

Andrew Davidson: The gargoyle (2008, Doubleday)

468 pages

English language

Published Sept. 17, 2008 by Doubleday.

ISBN:
978-0-385-52494-0
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
315909327

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4 stars (7 reviews)

A very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, crashes his car 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 suicide--for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul. Then a beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany--From publisher description.

5 editions

reviewed The gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Review of 'The gargoyle' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Whilst I was reading this book, someone asked me if it was a love story and I replied 'I doubt it'. Well it turned out I was mistaken because enduring love is at the very centre of the story. There are two distinct voices in the narration, so at no point was I unsure about whose story I was reading. I did prefer the narrator's prose more than Marianne's. I felt her stories rambled a bit and felt they were more like legends. However I did enjoy them more as they started to intertwine with the narrator's story and the central concept of an eternal soul.

And for all those pedants out there, Marianne does correct the narrator on the proper definition of gargoyle.

reviewed The gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Review of 'The gargoyle' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Love is as strong as death, as hard as hell

A dark night, a car accident, a fire, a burnt man.
The hospital. The burns, the slow recovery. The mysterious woman, the fortress, the gargoyles that want themselves out of the stone.

Mystic and fantasy. Pain, strong emotions, and above all love. Deep and unconditional love. Love that lasts 700 years.

I was captivating by the story even from the first page. Sometimes the feelings were overwhelmed. Disgust and pain, terrible pain.

Sometimes the details about the burns and the medical procedures bocome horrible, you want to stop, the reading becomes painful, but you just can’t. You even discover that they are essential and they the story couldn’t be completed without them.

I wish I could write more about this book. But I cannot. I am still captivating; really this story just blew me away. There were moments that I …

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Subjects

  • Dante Alighieri, -- 1265-1321 -- Translations into German -- Fiction
  • Burns and scalds -- Patients -- Fiction
  • Traffic accident victims -- Fiction
  • Hospital wards -- Fiction
  • Reincarnation -- Fiction
  • Stone carvers -- Fiction
  • Psychological fiction