BOOK REVIEW: THE GARGOYLE by ANDREW DAVIDSON

love is as strong as death, as hard as Hell

Death seperates the soul from the body

but love separates all things from the soul

MEISTER ECKHART, German mystic

Sermon: "Eternal Birth"

from The Gargoyle  by Andrew Davidson (dedication) 

Looking for a change in reading fare after being deeply engrossed in a supernatural e-book series. I found myself craving a REAL book in my hand and went book hunting at one my local secondhand book sellers and got this book sorely on the look of the front cover (Okay the title had me a little curious was this another Quasimodo), As well as RUTH PRAWER JABAVALA's 3 CONTINENTS which I must admit started on and then quickly dropped (it was too involving for me at the time) and got the surprise of my life (okay this month) in the Gargoyle.

I am first and foremost a sucker for what I call BAB'S Books about Books. Books in which the writer writes about another book being discovered searched for or translated. It is just like Magic for me. And the Gargoyle was not just a book about a Book, it was a book about a lot of books.

The book is written in the first person by a character who goes unnamed through the book. But manages to shift back and forth between himself and the other major character in the story Marianne Engel whom he refers to by her full name almost through out the book. (I can't be sure I read through it so quickly I almost begrudged myself sleep to complete it.) It is ofcourse a love story and it is however one unlike any that I have read. 

The main character who I shall refer to as MR. U (for unnamed) has a near fatal accident brought on by a hallucination of "a volley of burning arrows swarming out of the woods) and lands in hospital with what he feels would be 4th degree burns (if only the healthy doctors sitting down discussing definitions would just decide). He is discouraged and bereft at losing what he sees as his only asset His Beauty and to read him describe it oohh la la, and along with it his means of livelyhood (he is lo and behold a porn star).

He then meets Marianne Engel who proceeds to tell him stories of their past together which by her count goes back 700. Andrew Davidson does a convincing job of shifting through the multiple storylines never leaving you behind until it all feels like so real. Mariane Engel starts her life off in medieval Germany as a baby found on the step of Monastery run by Mystic Nuns, and soon finds her self to have an unnatural talent for languages. The one book that she translates form Italian to German that somehow binds the two is Dante's Inferno. She reads this to Mr. U and it becomes the backdrop of the story the book within the book, Fiction mixed with reality until you do not know what is truth and what is myth.

As one would gather from the fact that a lot of this book is based on Dante's Inferno its subject matter slowly plods towards morality, and God Faith and repentance for ones actions. The idea of God or Godliness is explored while sidestepping Evil and the evil within all mankind. Drawing from the Philosophy of  Medieval Theologians like Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hockheim) who impact heavily on the spiritual and personal tone of the book and Mechthild von Madberg, who is one of  Marianne Engel's Three Masters (who are they... now that will be spoiling the book for you).

 Throw in a few hundred centuries of unrequited love, a Master Artist or two,  the idea on Past Lives,  and a cast that is so life like you almost want this to be true, this has got to be one of the most compelling books I have come across this year. Grab your self a copy. If you've read it let me know your best parts. 

Happy Reading

'...When I asked who you sided with-Pope John or the Emperor- you answered that as soon as a man has chosen a side in war, he's already picked the wrong one. "All history is just one man trying to take something away from another man, and usually it doesn't belong to either of them."'

Marianne Engel,The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson page 237

READER REVIEW: AFTER THE VOTE

I picked up a copy of a KWANINI? publication AFTER THE VOTE that is written by CONCERNED KENYAN WRITERS. The book as the title suggests is based on the reflections of various writers on the events of the 2008 ‘Post Election Violence’. I was curious, as the topic stirs up a bitter taste in my mouth and a cold feeling in the depths of my tummy of things that could have been and still could be. Things that before the election happened elsewhere on the African continent, not in Kenya. Never Kenya.

The introduction of the book has Billy Kahora (who is the editor of KWANI?) explaining the thinking behind the compilation. A friend called him and said ‘this is the time of the Kenyan writer. We can now move beyond “pretty” stories about our relationships with our mothers, and write about “real” things.’ When Mr. Kahora asked him what he meant by real he replied ‘War and Conflict.’

However anyone who attempts to write about war and conflict invariably writes about relationships, don’t they?

The writers KALUNDI SERUMANGA (Unsettled), ANDIA KISIA (Untitled), ALISON OJAY OWUOR (The Multiplication of Votes), SIMIYU BARASA (The Obituary of Simiyu Barasa)and TONY MOCHAMA (The Road to Eldoret) try through their narratives to explain our collective thoughts and fears and did a pretty good job of it.

ANDIA KISIA

Andia Kisias UNTITLED was perhaps the most poignant of all the narratives. She wrote invariably about relationships. The relationships our generation had with the country of our youth. What we thought it was (an infallible utopia) and what it truly was (a repressed and oppressed state). Our relationships with our President who he seemed to be (a benevolent father ‘Baba Moi’) and what he truly was (a cunning dictator). How we saw ourselves Watoto wa Nyayo and all (members of the tribe Kenyan rather than clansmen of rival tribes) and how we have now inherited the prejudices of our parents and by extension our tribes.

“I am no longer the unmitigated Kenyan I once was. And now I can see every straining seam, every river and every joint that holds us together. And I no longer take it for granted that they will.”

The Obituary of Simiyu Barasa by Himself would read like a screenplay for a television comedy if it did not ring true deep down inside. His dispatch tapped into that niggling fear we all had. Where would we go?  How would we get there? How would we protect our families, our children? What if we died? What if the violence never ended?

“… with youth dancing round it waving their bloody machetes, look closely. That ear might be mine. That grinning upper lip might be mine. I loved you my fellow countrymen. I loved without thinking of your parental lineage. I loved Kenya. But look what this country has done to me: sodomised my sense of humanity and pride.”

Simiyu manages to humanize the faceless nameless bodies we saw on television reminding us all too subtly that they are or were people with families, children, dreams. Innocent human beings. And he makes so graphic (and here I am reminded of the power of words well wielded) the feel of a violent death, by club, spear, machete…

“And Mwangi was on his feet, and out of the hotel before one could say the words ‘balkanization’ or ‘ethnic tension’- and now with the sun just coming up over the horizon, Mwangi is on his way to Eldoret to get his family, and take them to the safety of…”

 

Tony Mochamas short story about a man who has worked hard all his life and made a life for himself and his family, who braves the danger to go back into Eldoret to get his family to safety is good as it is horrifying for all it could have actually happened and probably did.

I was disappointed that his narrative of 8 days THE BRINKIPICE OF GENOCIDE was cut short at day one. It should have ended on day 8 or not have been included at all.

All in all AFTER THE VOTE was an edifying read, and I can say to Mr. Kahoras friend I would rather we were still reading “pretty” stories rather than trying to pick up our pride, and our humanity in the manhole we threw it in for “real” stories anyday.

Pick up a copy, tell me what you think.

http://www.kwani.org/publications/kwanini-series.htm Follow the link to see other KWANINI? publications, I am going out to look for more