The Gargoyle

                "Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love."~page 5
All through out this book I wondered what name did the narrator have and why couldn't I know? I felt so close to him and could feel the snake almost slithering his name, but it never quite did. Then as I neared the end of this beautiful book I realized that his name really didn't matter, because the ones we love most don't require a name. Their names live in our blood, being pumped through us with every breath we take. We inevitably create wordless names for ourselves and those closest to us every day. His name is written in the timber of his voice, in the folds of his scarred flesh and in the way he expresses itself, it can not be confined to one inconsequential word.

I had no idea what I was getting into with this book, I got it only because it was on the clearance table and it had cool looking black pages but Andrew Davidson blew me away. It is love in its purest form, raw, flawed and without compare. He takes multiple love stories and weaves them together to create a whole new story about two completely different people. One of these people is Marianne who claims that she is 700 years old and in love with our main character (the narrator) and has been for her entire life. Over the book she tells our narrator her story and in the process tells him their story. Naturally he's skeptical, but has little choice but to listen to what she has to say. He was an aspiring porn producer who got into a car accident and had most of his skin burnt off and Marianne found him in the burn ward of the hospital. Despite her very schizophrenic tendencies he lets her stay because he has nobody else.

Andrew Davidson gives us a book that is hypnotic, terrifying and beautiful all at the same time. I have never read a burn description as horrifying and vivid as the ones that he put in this book. I could feel my palms twitching as I imagined the skin peeling back and the smoke invading my nostrils, but I could also feel the burden of living with a snake in my spine and knowing that I might not be deserving of a seemingly perfect love. The narrator is the embodiment of all of us. We all have snakes filling us with uncertainty and self doubt, just like we have all at one point or another felt undeserving of a love that is beyond us.

 Everyone has heard the saying that to love something you have to let it go, no where is the process and the aftermath of that decision so completely illustrated as it is in this book. This is one of those books that will always have a permanent home on my bookshelf and I know I'll be reading it again.