The Gargoyle
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4.5 • 223 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Bestseller
The Gargoyle: the mesmerizing story of one man's descent into personal hell and his quest for salvation.
On a dark road in the middle of the night, a car plunges into a ravine. The driver survives the crash, but his injuries confine him to a hospital burn unit. There the mysterious Marianne Engel, a sculptress of grotesques, enters his life. She insists they were lovers in medieval Germany, when he was a mercenary and she was a scribe in the monastery of Engelthal. As she spins the story of their past lives together, the man's disbelief falters; soon, even the impossible can no longer be dismissed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Davidson's powerful debut, the unnamed narrator, "a coke-addled pornographer," drives his car off a mountain road in a part of the country that's never specified. During his painful recovery from horrific burns suffered in the crash, the narrator plots to end his life after his release from the hospital. When a schizophrenic fellow patient, Marianne Engel, begins to visit him and describe her memories of their love affair in medieval Germany, the narrator is at first skeptical, but grows less so. Eventually, he abandons his elaborate suicide plan and envisions a life with Engel, a sculptress specializing in gargoyles. Davidson, in addition to making his flawed protagonist fully sympathetic, blends convincing historical detail with deeply felt emotion in both Engel's recollections of her past life with the narrator and her moving accounts of tragic love. Once launched into this intense tale of unconventional romance, few readers will want to put it down.
Customer Reviews
Excellent writing, wonderful characters, great plot
Very imaginative book that I highly recommend. Extremely well written!
Gargoyle - an original story
I enjoyed this book very much and have read it more than once. The story is intriguing and fantastic, as it leads you through history. I highly recommend it!
Beautiful
Such a unique and beautiful love story across time.