Staff Pick: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle (2008) is not for everyone, but for those willing to venture to gothic spaces with unsettling explicit descriptions, this bold novel won’t disappoint. 

Whilst on a cocaine and alcohol fuelled binge, the nameless narrator hallucinates vividly and runs his car off a cliff. The impact of the crash triggers an explosion, setting his body aflame. He spends the next year undergoing burn treatment and reconstructive surgery, including multiple skin grafts. 

Recovering in hospital, the narrator begins to receive visits from an attractive, tattooed, former psychiatric patient, Marianne, who claims that they were lovers in a former life. Marianne makes her living giving life to gargoyles, whom she hears in her head, by carving them out of stone. The novel tells their story from when they met in medieval Germany to the present day.

References to Dante’s Inferno which feature throughout enhance the gothic and supernatural themes. Marianne claims to be the author of the first German translation. Conveniently, this translation is still in her possession. Two of the world’s foremost palaeographers are employed to analyse her manuscript, putting her claims to the test…  

Copies of 'The Gargoyle' is available in the libraries.

Shane Murphy, Senior Library Assistant