The Gargoyle

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tlannan30, January 31, 2012 (view all comments by tlannan30)
This is not a book I would normally read but it was recommended to me by a coworker and I ended up loving it.

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Christy Valentine, August 19, 2009 (view all comments by Christy Valentine)
As a reader who appreciates realism and depth in literature, perhaps Sophie Gee's New York Times review of this poorly-written novel should have tipped me off that this was not my sort of book.

I have no problem with romance in literature, but in order for it to be affecting, it must feel honest. The characters must be able to relate to one another. In order to do this, they must also be real people. Davidson's characters are more like cardboard cutouts than real people. The nameless narrator and his lover Marianne are, at the novel's beginning, both ethereally beautiful, intelligent and talented, like a pair of orphans from a V. C. Andrews novel, and though the former is mangled in a horrific car accident, his suffering is less a real hell than it is a recitation of medical procedures. While both characters suffer from self-destructive natures, the motivation behind their actions is unclear. The narrator's drug addiction is given very little time and, though it leads to a series of fantastic confrontations, we're supposed to believe it grasps him with a vice-like grip though the author allows for less than two pages in the novel's entirety to express such a failing. Likewise, the narrator's love for Marianne is one-dimensional and tepid at best for the majority of the book. They don't seem to have anything in common or to share any stimulating conversation, even during Marianne's retelling of their former love during the fourteenth century. We're simply meant to accept that they have an epic love because that's what the author says. Perhaps it has something to do with the obscene amounts of food Marianne cooks.

Reportedly, it took seven years of research for Davidson to compose the novel, and while this is certainly an ambitious undertaking, it's disappointing that it amounts to poorly developed characters, cheesier (literally) descriptions and dialogue than anything written by Stephenie Meyer, and a regurgitation of facts about Icelandic, German and Japanese culture that feels less like epic storytelling and more like a Wikipedia entry. The religious content of the novel is similar to that found in Dan Brown thrillers: based on facts but still superficial. The narrator's religious convictions (or lack thereof) flip like a light switch, much like his feelings for Marianne, which come tumbling out in an unintentionally kitschy heap like bad teenage poetry. But Davidson tells us it is so, so it must be.

Perhaps if the author had spent more time developing the characters and their relationship(s)- and less time listing items of food consumed, including one laughably memorable moment involving pizza and Marianne's left nipple- it would have been an accomplishment of a first novel, instead of a book a few slots above cheap paperback.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780307388674

Author:

Davidson, Andrew

Publisher:

Anchor Books

Subject:

Literary

Subject:

Horror

Subject:

Literature-A to Z

Copyright:

2009

Edition Description:

Trade paper

Publication Date:

20090831

Binding:

TRADE PAPER

Grade Level:

General/trade

Language:

English

Pages:

528

Dimensions:

7.92x5.16x.97 in. .86 lbs.