The Gargoyle

I don't often post about the books I read, but I completed The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson recently and found it worth posting about. At it's heart it's a simple love tale, but it's similar in tone to The Time Traveler's Wife in that it tells a rather unconventional story, avoiding the trap of slushy sentimentality.

Told in the first person, which seems to be fashionable these days (or at least I've ended up reading quite a few first person novels lately), it tells the tale of an unnamed drug addicted porn actor who crashes his car and is horrifically burnt in the resulting fire. Much of the early part of the book is spent describing in vivid and almost painful detail his burns and the agonising treatments he receives in hospital. Rather understandably, he spends his time between treatments planning his suicide.

He is constantly tormented by a snake which has taken residence in his spine which is only quieted by large doses of morphine.

He then meets a rather strange woman who wanders in from the psychiatric ward who claims they first met centuries earlier. Intrigued, he allows her to keep visiting and she tells him the story of their medieval life together. Things progress and without spoiling anything, by the end of the book the last thing the last thing on his mind is suicide.

The edges of the pages are printed black to fit in with the burn theme, which forms the only problem with this novel as the black ink transfers onto your hands as you read it.

I'm not really doing the story justice in my description as it probably just sounds a bit odd, but I've really enjoyed reading this book which is even more amazing for being Andrew Davidson's d�but novel.