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