I got an advance copy of Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle quite some time ago, and finally got around to reading it on a recent plane trip. It sounded like my kind of book: a debut novel, combining well-researched contemporary and historical fiction, told by a cynical narrator/protagonist.The plot: the unnamed narrator, an actor in and producer of pornographic films, is horrifically burned in a car accident. Having made his living in the skin trade, the irony of his situation does not escape him. While undergoing months of painful treatment in a burn ward and contemplating suicide, he is visited by Marianne Engel, a psychiatric patient in the same hospital. Marianne, a sculptor of gargoyles, tells him that they were lovers in a past life in medieval Germany. Over the months of his hospitalization, Marianne returns again and again, spinning out their improbable story, as well as the stories of other lovers in other times and places. The result? You guessed it. Love, salvation, redemption.
The first half of The Gargoyle really drew me in, with the intertwined past and present, the unlikeable, but rational, narrator, and the obviously insane Marianne. That said, the resolution left me cold. The narrator's story was more interesting before he was redeemed by love; after he found love, it got a bit soppy.
Pretty good airplane reading nonetheless.
