The nameless narrator of The Gargoyle has lived the life of a despicable man. A womanizer and pornographer, he learned the lesson of emotional detachment early in life. When he is caught in a fiery car crash, it is as though his outer body, covered almost completely with 3rd degree burns, has come to match his soul. As he slowly, painfully recovers in his hospital bed, he is visited by the beautiful, talented, clearly deranged Marianne Engle. Part Virgil, part Shahrazad, she leads him out of his own personal hell by telling him stories of love and redemption. Among those stories is how she saved his life over 700 years ago when he was a mercenary and she a nun. They are lovely stories, but they’re just that: works of fiction. ….Right?….
This is Andrew Davidson’s first novel, and it is a great effort. A translation of Dante’s Inferno stands at the center of his novel, and Davidson plays well with the concept of hell. But Marianne Engle’s stories are the best part of this book, and it is the impossibility of her “past life” that earned The Gargoyle a comparison to Life of Pi. There is less ambiguity at the end of Yann Martel’s fantastic novel, but this book will leave a mark on you in the questions it leaves unanswered and in the answers it gives that can’t possibly be true.
Posted by alaubach
BookPeople 
I LOVED this book. I wish more people would realize that, okay, the first two chapters might be a little gross, because of all the burningness, but it’s seriously important to the rest of the story. And the rest of the story is brilliant.