The Gargoyle ~ Paperback ~ Andrew Davidson

Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love. What does it feel like to be burned, not just a small area of skin, a fingertip, but to be totally burned, to be sizzling, blistering-alive in an inferno? What does it feel like to have the rotting burned skins scrubbed from your body? To be left in such pain and so scarred that death becomes your only aim? And then to meet a woman who's convinced she nursed you in medieval Germany-a madwoman who carves gargoyles, who hears their screams as she releases them from the stone? Is it possible to see beauty in the stories she tells? Is it possible that there is truth in her stories? Is it possible to find love in madness? Is it possible to save her? The Gargoyle is a wild, beautiful, brilliant journey, sweeping across centuries, full of stories within stories. When it ends, you'll want to read it again. Accolades Shortlisted for Galaxy British Book Awards: Richard and Judy's Best Read of the Year 2009. Reviews "Starred Review. At the start of Davidson's powerful debut, the unnamed narrator, a coke-addled pornographer, drives his car off a mountain road in a part of the country that's never specified. During his painful recovery from horrific burns suffered in the crash, the narrator plots to end his life after his release from the hospital. When a schizophrenic fellow patient, Marianne Engel, begins to visit him and describe her memories of their love affair in medieval Germany, the narrator is at first skeptical, but grows less so. Eventually, he abandons his elaborate suicide plan and envisions a life with Engel, a sculptress specializing in gargoyles. Davidson, in addition to making his flawed protagonist fully sympathetic, blends convincing historical detail with deeply felt emotion in both Engel's recollections of her past life with the narrator and her moving accounts of tragic love. Once launched into this intense tale of unconventional romance, few readers will want to put it down." Publishers Weekly "likely to ignite the passion of anyone who loves a mix of romance and the macabre…Nothing [the narrator]—or you—can assume about this spectacularly imaginative journey will help navigate its twists and turns. Before it's all over, like Dante before him, our narrator must visit Hades, and like every chapter of The Gargoyle, that's a hell of a story, too." Washington Post