The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson Book Review

The Gargoyle’s nameless narrator is a porn star and cocaine addict who crashes his car into a ravine while high to avoid a shower of hallucinatory arrows he sees coming towards him. The accident leaves him fighting for his life in a hospital burns unit where he meets Marianne Engel, a sculptor and psychiatric patient who believe she and our narrator were lovers in the 14th century. And so begins the story of an enduring romance which defies time, pain and death.

I received this book at my Book Club Christmas Secret Santa and my natural loathing of hard backed books relegated it to the bottom of my TBR pile. A horrific bout of flu hit this month providing the perfect opportunity to curl up in bed with the giant book - and it was so good it only took me 4 days to devour! A ray of joy in an otherwise dismal week.


The treatment of the burn patients described in this book is completely fascinating (warning, the description of the debridement process is very graphic) but the stories Marianne weaves of their past lives are so beautifully written they almost deserve to be a book in their own right. I loved the fine line Davidson treads between Marianne’s tale being an elaborate, well researched figment of her mental illness and the possibility that it could all be true. The only section I found a little far fetched was the possibly hallucinatory journey through Dante’s Inferno which may have slightly over egged the supernatural theme.


I definitely recommend reading this book, I’d actually put it in my top 20 reads, I enjoyed it that much! but make sure you have a few quiet days ahead of you as you’ll not want to put it down!