The Gargoyle - Andrew Davidson

The Gargoyle begins with a cocaine-blitzed porn star wrecking his car, resulting in severe burns covering much of his body. While he recovers in a hospital burn ward, the unnamed narrator is visited by a strange woman named Marianne Engel who claims that they were once lovers. In the 14th Century.

What follows is a Scheherazade-like telling of various stories by Marianne Engel, some of which reveal her past in a German convent, others that seem only to help relieve the narrator's excruciating physical, mental and emotional pain. But for some reason which the narrator can't understand, Marianne does not come to visit every day. When she doesn't, the narrator is filled with dread and despair over what's left of his mostly incinerated body and soul. Other characters (mostly doctors and nurses) appear, none of which offer anything close to the benefits of Marianne Engel's tales. But nagging thoughts overwhelm him. Is Marianne Engel delusional? Insane? Or is she who she says he is? And if she is, then who is he?

The Gargoyle is a real toss-up for me. I liked the initial premise and wondered if this was going to a redemption story, a quest, a romance, a retelling of Dante's Inferno, all of the above or none of the above. Then you've got a completely unlikable narrator who may be getting exactly what he deserves.

Then there are the tales. I found myself enjoying Marianne Engel's tales more than the the story's main narrative. Some of them are extraordinary, so much so that I was disappointed when Davidson returned to the present-day story. After a few stories, I found myself trying to wonder how they all tied together, not really caring what the narrator was going through in his recuperation.

Davidson's first novel is indeed ambitious. Much of it works, but two things soured it for me. There's a subplot of the narrator's "bitch snake," a satanic-like voice living in his spine that whispers nasty little things when there's not enough morphine coursing through the narrator's system. The "bitch snake" really wears thin after awhile and I began to wonder about the importance or even necessity of the device.

I was somewhat prepared for the ending, but the closer I got to it, the more I hoped I was wrong. Unfortunately I wasn't. To tell you any more about the ending would be unfair, so I'll leave it at that.

So again, I'm not really sure how I feel about The Gargoyle. Davidson obviously has done a lot of historical and medical research for the book and knows how to keep the pages turning (especially during the tales), but the end result was something of a disappointment. Yet I liked it enough to pick up the next thing Davidson writes. He's definitely a writer to watch.