minsidaavtangentbordet

"the Gargoyle"

The last two books that I have read have both been fantasy novels, or at least the first one was very close to fantasy while the second one definitely crossed over. Here's my review of the first one, "the Gargoyle".

Ok, so.

"the Gargoyle" is a novel written by the canadian author Andrew Davidson. Davidson has a degree in English litterature, has lived and worked in Japan, and "the Gargoyle" was his first novel. It has been translated to several languages, and been something of a success, apparently.

The Gargoyle is essentially a love story, it's very romantic in its belief of love as a curing or healing power or whatever you want to call it. It's the "love conquers all" kind of story. Also, it's a bit on the Twilight, Bella & Edward romance with a dark twist side, only clearly it is they guy who is being saved by this otherwordly fantastic amazing woman, here. Which is fine, of course.

Another theme in the book is faith, or lack of faith. I don't know if it's religious faith, or just the kind of faith that makes people believe in working and fighting for something, daring to care about something. The main character doesn't believe in anything at the start of the book, but by the end of it he cares enough and has gotten his faith in life back. And no, I'm not spoiling anything for you by telling you this, because you sort of know from the start that's what's going to happen (otherwise there wouldn't be any real point to the story).

The main character (whom I suspect of having some personality traits in common with the author) has had a messed up childhood with two fosterparents who were constantly on drugs. Apart from having a boundless curiosity wich led him to spending a lot of time in the library and reading everything from novels to scientific litterature, and according to the author being as handsome as some ancient greek sculpture, he really didn't have much going for him during his childhood and teen years.

He eventually becomes addicted to drugs, and because of his particular talents, he also becomes a pornstar. Seriously. Why? Anyway, he seems to have led a pretty shitty life up to when the story stars, namely when he, high on drugs, drives his car off a cliff. The crash leads to the car catching fire and the main character being roasted alive, only escaping death by the car eventually falling into a nearby lake or pond.

Now he has to spend his days recovering at a hospital and undergoing very painful skin transplants and coming to grips with his new looks, which are perfectly monstrous. He also has no friends left, because his old ones turned out to only be interested in his money and anyway they weren't that close to begin with. It's all very tragic and his very cynical and despondent and planning to commit suicide as soon as he gets out of the hospital. The only good thing, as he sees it, is that he occasionally gets a dose of morphine during operations.

Until one day a woman whom he does not recognize, who isn't part of the hospital staff, comes into his room. She has long beautiful hair, stunning green-blue eyes and is dressed kind of like a hippie. She also has a tattoo on her back (something he discovers later) and she claims that she knows him and that they were lovers in another life, in Germany during the middle ages. Her name is Marianne Engel, and she is a sculptress, who carves gargoyles from stone blocks.

At first, he doesn't believe her and is convinced that she either suffers from bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, or both, and that she is completely delusional. But as she comes to visit him again, he grows fond of her and of her stories of their previous life together, and also of the other stories of love that she tells him.

The story of how his recovery at the hospital and about the treatment he has to go through is interwoven with Mariannes story about how she grew up at a monastery in Germany, and with three love stories that she tells him, the first one taking place in Italy during the plague, the second one in Asia and the third one among the Vikings in Norway.

Marianne is, however, one of the mental patients and the doctor who treats the main character is at first opposed to her coming there to visit him. But when she sees the effect that Marianne has on him, she allows it. As she puts it "I've never seen a person more in need of a friend than you". Marianne becomes something of his saviour, and he slowly becomes more hopeful and returns back to life, not to his old life but to a new kind of life. He begins to see the world and the people in it more positively, and hope for a life together with Marianne in her house. If he can only get off the morphine, and if Mariannes work doesn't completely wear her down...

Yup, this is a very, very classic love story. But it got drawn out, very long and uneven. I wasn't able to finish it, didn't have the patience. So I never got to know how they managed together.
I think the author could have killed his darlings a little more, because some parts of the story were a bit superflous. I mean, even if you have a great idea for a story and likable characters, that's not enough.
He does manage to draw you in at the beginning of the story, but the somehow I wasn't able to hold that interest for the story and stay interested in the characters and sometimes the story got completely unengaging.

I'm sorry. I did want to like it. I liked the cover. I sort of think I might have eventually "got" the main character and where he came from, despite having some issues with his whining and selfpity and questioning of his own manliness I still didn't mind him. I think other people wanted to like it too, because it has a very promising story and seems to have all the right ingredients.

I don't know what kind of conclusion I should come to, but I think it has something to do with suicidal tendencies, being overly religious (despite all his talk about not being religious) and lacking a sense of humour, and how these traits all came together in the main character. Hm, maybe just that suicidal people perhaps all lack a sense of humour, or if they don't it's still flawed at some fundamental level, since they take themselves seriously enough to commit suicide.




A photo of the author, who looks um, like you'd imagine him to. A bit concerned with his own appearance but probably very mushy, bearing a weak sememblence to Paul Auster, who also always looks a bit peculiar in his photos. Ah, whatever. If you're a fan of Dante's Inferno and Paul Auster, you might actually like this book. By the way.