The Gargoyle

The Gargoyle

by Andrew Davidson

Just finished a really creative book that I couldn’t put down!  Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle is a complicated tale that ties in multiple stories bringing two characters closer and closer.  I loved the juxtaposition of the two main characters, the male (who is unnamed), a former porn star, who begins the story crashing his car off a cliff and getting caught in a burning car.  He is rescued and a woman who has no memory of her past, Marianne Engel, befriends him at the hospital’s burn unit while he recovers from the accident.  The ‘Burned Man’ loses his ‘former life’ as he has lost some of his bodily functions, including the loss of his penis, in the accident.  Marianne brings a ‘century-long’ history to him, suggesting that the two of them have been connected through many lives.  She shares these ‘many lives’ with him over the course of the book.  The ‘Burned Man’ leaves the hospital after a year of recovery and dozens of surgeries and goes to live with Marianne, who herself left the hospital years before after being in the hospital’s mental ward.  She had been released under the care of a person who is now her agent representing her sculpting work.  The chapters of the book go from present day to the past lives of the two characters (Burned Man and Marianne) in the 1400s.  Marianne shares their legacy with lessons learned in each story (for example, of a monastery in Germany and a number of romantic tales that bring the two close together yet always further apart).  All of the stories involved the Burned Man’s character getting “burned” to death.  The stories are quite beautiful in how the characters try to find each other and navigate the various obstacles that stand in their way.  Marianne’s mental condition is questioned by the various people who interact with her and the Burned Man in the hospital, and things worsen when he moves in with her.  As the story comes to an end, Marianne is in a frenzy, engaged in her final art sculptures of her life while the Burned Man tries to figure out her next move – which ends up being a suicide walk into the ocean.  A love story with a twist.  The stories flow well and keep the reader captivated through the end.  Not my usual type of book but really enjoyed it, especially the multiple story lines.