a review of "The Gargoyle"

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Once again, it seems that I am destined to swim against the tide to some degree with my latest review. Am I destined to dislike every book loved by all others? Oh, the burden of it all...lol

It has been several weeks since I finished “The Gargoyle” but I needed to give my opinion a bit of time to form completely. And I will admit that I looked about and read some of the other numerous reviews out there. There were things I agreed with, but more that I disagreed with. Because while it seems the majority of the reviews have been very positive, I had my reservations.

At first, I was rather caught up in the story. And it is a grand story in many ways. Some have said that they found our Narrator, whose name we never learn, an unlikable character. And on the surface there seems reason for that. He is a man who describes himself as having only one talent, that of a porn actor. Although he is quite successful as a drinker and a cocaine addict as well, with a burgeoning career as a producer of porn films also. Not your typical hero. But in fact I found him quite likable, with a very realistic understanding of himself and a great, if cynical, sense of humor. Our narrator undergoes a terrible fate at the beginning of the book. In a cocaine induced hallucination, he crashes his car and is terribly burned. In fact, the one asset that has been integral to his career is burned off. Again, some had an issue with the description of his burn treatments, while I found it all rather fascinating.

He awakens to find himself in the burn ward of the hospital, with everything he had gone. His beauty, his money, his friends are gone, and he is left only with unbearable pain and a future as frightening as others find his countenance. To a degree, it is understandable that he spends his days planning the perfect suicide.
Until one day, a strange woman arrives to visit him. A psychiatric patient, a successful sculptor of gargoyles and, according to her account, his lover since they first met in 14th century Germany. He does not believe her story, but since he has no one else willing to care for him upon his release, he goes with her to her house, where she works in the basement, frantically carving her creations. Between her multi days long carving sessions, she tells him stories, of what she says is the history of their love through the centuries and the stories of four other groups of lovers, in 14th-century Italy, Victorian England, medieval Japan and Viking Scandinavia. Her stories attempt to have us suspend our disbelieve, to accept the possibility in the possibility that she is not just mad, but that in fact, they have been in love for centuries.

Now, I think that the four stories are quite good in and of themselves. His writing, his descriptions, at times, can be compelling, the 'journey' through the Dante's Inferno inspired Hell, fascinating, and the story of the lovers that she claims they once were, very interesting. I am willing to suspend my disbelief about the whole issue of those missing centuries....it is the love that he supposedly rediscovers with Marianne in the present that I never quite buy. The evidence is just not there for me.
And I can't help but feel that the entire middle portion of the book could have benefited from the judicial use of an editors red pen. After the compelling description of his injuries and rehab, which are, yes, a wee bit gruesome, the rather vague musing of much of the middle of the book seems rather tedious as I waited for something, anything to happen.

I read somewhere that the book sold for $1.25 million in the United States alone. That is a great deal of money for what I though was ultimately a fairly entertaining, rather interesting story but ultimately a somehow lacking and overdone book.
No doubt, Andrew David­son is a very talented writer and I have hopes that with his next book he, and his editor, will reign that talent a bit more under control.