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Title details for The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson - Available

The Gargoyle

by Andrew Davidson
ebook
3 of 3 copies available
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3 of 3 copies available
An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time.
On a burn ward, a man lies between living and dying, so disfigured that no one from his past life would even recognize him. His only comfort comes from imagining various inventive ways to end his misery. Then a woman named Marianne Engel walks into his hospital room, a wild-haired, schizophrenic sculptress on the lam from the psych ward upstairs, who insists that she knows him – that she has known him, in fact, for seven hundred years. She remembers vividly when they met, in another hospital ward at a convent in medieval Germany, when she was a nun and he was a wounded mercenary left to die. If he has forgotten this, he is not to worry: she will prove it to him.
And so Marianne Engel begins to tell him their story, carving away his disbelief and slowly drawing him into the orbit and power of a word he'd never uttered: love.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 23, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780307371638

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780307371638
      • File size: 2282 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from June 16, 2008
      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.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 27, 2008
      The debut from Winnipeg writer Davidson is a sweeping tale of undying love between a burn victim and a sculptress of gargoyles who claims the pair have been lovers throughout ancient times. Brought to life in a spirited yet intensely personal reading by Lincoln Hoppe, the story resonates well beyond the first listen. Hoppe reads with tremendous passion and intensity, never going over the top, but always drawing his audience into the tale with a raw performance. Through suffering, pain, hatred and love, Hoppe captures the very essence of this enthralling tale and allows listeners to journey along wherever the tale goes. A Doubleday hardcover (Reviews, June 16).

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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