Book #29

Gargoyle
by Andrew Davidson

Another one for the librarian; this is starting to get ugly.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

After reading Andrew Davidson's debut novel, I am reminded of the famous quote, "Seldom have so few given so much to so many." Except in this case, it should be: never has any one been given so much, and made of it so little. This should be a good book; it is a brilliant idea, it has powerful themes and fascinating characters who are tangible and genuine despite their particular glitter, and Mr. Davidson is a good writer. But it is not a good book.

The concept is a story of redemption through love, and of the glorification of the spirit through the mortification of the flesh. The narrator begins the story as a magnificent physical specimen who is spiritually dead; within the first five pages, he has put himself through a horrific car crash and subsequently been burned over most of his body. Davidson's descriptive powers are, somewhat sadly, never more evident than in his explication of life in a burn ward. I have been a Stephen King fan for decades, and I cannot recall the last time I cringed away from a page -- until now. The narrator, having lost all his ersatz self-worth along with his skin, is surviving his treatment with the sole purpose of being released from the hospital so he can commit suicide -- another description, by the way, which is almost poetic in its grotesque verisimilitude -- until a mysterious and mystical woman walks into his life. She is Marianne Engel, a mentally unbalanced sculptor who carves gargoyles, and she tells the narrator that they were in love in a previous life, in Medieval Germany, when he was a wounded mercenary and she was a former nun.

There is a wonderful love story here, but it is ruined by Davidson's abuse of cliches: the climactic confession of love read something like a junior high school girl's diary ("I love you, I really really love you, and I know that you love me and our love is pure, the kind of love that will go on forever loving and being loved in pure love forever and ever." Et cetera.). There is a story of art transcending the artist, but it is ruined by the depictions of the artist's distasteful personality unleavened by descriptions of the wonderful art she is creating, for descriptions of her art there are none. There is a fascinating parallel between two worlds, both of which hold the same eternal romance -- ruined by the author's penchant for bad cliffhangers at chapter breaks (I.e., "I recognized the man. I gasped his name in a whisper as the bag fell from my hand." And on to the next chapter.) There is a heartbreaking descent into loss and loneliness, ruined by the simple fact that it takes too long: Marianne determines that she has a limited number of statues left to carve, and we know she will die with the last one -- but for some reason, Davidson chose 27 as her countdown's starting point. Begging the question, "What's wrong with 10?"

The book made me wish that these two lovers had simply died in the 1300's and left the rest of us in peace. I give it a D.