The Gargoyle - Andrew Davidson

A novel about a love that seemingly spans seven hundred years, not to mention many social barriers, The Gargoyle explores our perceptions of beauty, sanity, faith and love. Written in the first person by an unnamed narrator and intertwined with classical allusions, it tells his tale of recovery and rediscovery when a burns victim finds he can finally fall in love.

Graphic from the outset, the novel opens with the narrator driving in a cocaine-induced haze. Distracted by a vision of flaming arrows flying towards his car, he loses control and crashes down the hillside, the car bursting into flames. His life is only saved by the car rolling into a river, extinguishing the fire. He then winds up in hospital, discovering that he has been hideously burnt and disfigured. The burns are so horrific, he even lost his penis during the accident.

Davidson's prose here is unflinching. His discriptions of bubbling skin and its consequences are written to fill the reader with discomfort and horror. Using his extensive research, he builds up a painstaking account of the narrator's horrendous treatment, from operations to maggots to skin slicing, all designed to rebuild as much of him as possible. All the while he doesn't want to survive. Until he meets Marianne. Her seemingly mad belief that they are past lovers from centuries ago intrigues him and slowly gives him the will to get better.

Despite the corny-sounding concept, the narrator and Marianne could not be further from the traditional novels' lovers. Before the burns, the narrator was a cocaine-addicted porn star, who owned a production company churning out graphic adult movies. He was a man who thrived on his sexuality and good looks. The epitome of male sexuality. At first, Marianne is an inpatient at the hospital's psychiatric wing. She seems to be a manic fantasist who believes she's meeting her long-lost lover again. The narrator is scared and unsure, writing her off as a psychiatric patient. But her tales of love and intriguing sayings about their past reel him in. And with no family, and being abandoned by his fairweather friends , he has no-one else who pays any interest to him.

Appearance and love are central themes to the novel. Before the accident, the narrator is handsome and virile, a famous porn star with no concept of live. But after the accident everything he prided himself on has gone. He loses his looks, his speaking voice, his friends,his production company and the life he knew. Even worse for him, he is literally castrated; he has lost the ultimate physical male symbol. When he starts to fall for Marianne, he explains that they could never consummate their relationship, a fact Marianne nonchalantly accepts. The contrast between his hedonistic lifestyle before the accident and the celibate one afterwards develops the idea that their relationship and love is from a higher, divine place. Their love is almost holy, built on a meeting of minds and souls rather than initial sexual attraction. The narrator's apparent journey through Dante's hell to return to Marianne as he cold turkeys from morphine reinforces this notion; he is granted safe passage through hell to be reunited with her. They are apparently reunited by a higher order.

Marianne's tale-telling is another central theme to the novel. She weaves a narrative of their lives in the thirteenth century, when she was a nun who treated him, a burnt soldier, in Engelthal monastary. She weaves a tale of his miraculous recovery, their love and how she leaves the order to be at his side. Like their modern relationship, their love is unconventional and frowned upon. In the modern times, he is a castrated severe burns victim and she is a woman with a history of mental illness. In the thirteenth century, he is a wanted mercinary and she is a nun who turns her back on her vows to follow the man she loves.

In between her narrative of their love, she tells traditional tales of love, spanning Japan, the Vikings and twelfth century Italy. From a man who catches a fatal flu from his wife to die at her side to a Viking warrior who sacrifices his life for his friend's child, they all represent sacrifices for love. And the reader later discovers that Marianne apparently made her own sacrifice for their love in the thirteenth century. She kills the narrator to save him from an agonising death at the hands of his enemies, the ultimate act of love.

While Marianne cares for the narrator during his recuperation during hospital, it is him that cares for her during her manic moments of creating her gargoyles. Artist Marianne says she gets divine inspiration for each gargoyle she creates, unable to stop until she has freed them from the stone. But her carving is laced with mania. She eats coffee granules from the spoon to keep carving without sleep and refuses to eat as she says suffering is needed. It is during these episodes where the narrator gets to care for her, encouraging her to eat a little and bathing her with a sponge as she carves. When her carving is over, he bathes her and puts her to bed like a child before feeding her up to renourish her.

With each passing day, the power balance in their relationship changes. At first, Marianne rescues the narrator, helping him to recover from his injuries by lavishing food, stories and attention upon him. Her help fills him with the will to survive, leading him to become strong enough to move into her home. But after he moves in, this power starts to shift. Gradually he becomes more independent and becomes Marianne's source of support, feeding her and physically caring for her as her body becomes ravaged by her need to carve.

A novel that spans centuries and stretches the reader's imagination, The Gargoyle is a thought-provoking tale that asks readers to believe in the impossible. Riveting, innovative and vivid, it questions our perceptions about fact and fiction and makes the reader ask whether the line between fantasy and reality really matters when it leads an ostracised man to find love for the first time.

My next read: The Lady and The Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier.