The Gargoyle

""Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love.""

- The Burned Man

A 2008 historical/fantasy/romance novel by Andrew Davidson about a porn actor/drug addict burn victim who meets an eccentric artist who claims to know him from another life--several, actually--and spins him endless yarns of their lives together as he slowly recovers. Eventually, she takes him back to her home, where she works obsessively on her art, endlessly carving gargoyles grotesques out of stone for days and weeks on end, as she believes it to be her mission. Soon, it's not clear who is caring for whom. Is Marianne Engel just harmlessly loony, or perhaps dangerously unhinged, or is there something real within her stories? Relies heavily on Classical Mythology, all sorts of issues of Heaven and Hell, as well as ample Fun With Foreign Languages as she tells The Narrator stories from throughout the ages.

Compare to: American Gods, Divine Comedy. Not to be confused with Gargoyles


 * Aborted Arc: In chapter two, The Narrator says that he has ...and then we never hear about it again. Unless he's unconsciously referring to
 * Alternate History
 * Antiquated Linguistics: Marianne Engel has a rather grand, flowery way of speaking.
 * Arranged Marriage: More like "forced"--attemped by the daimyo on Sei. It doesn't really work out.
 * Beauty Equals Goodness: Subverted with The Narrator--he was beautiful before, but he eventually feels that he only becomes a good person after being horribly disfigured.
 * Big Fancy House: Castle, actually
 * Bittersweet Ending
 * The Black Death: Kills
 * Body Horror: One word: Not to mention the rest of the burns.
 * The Narrator's "snake," a.k.a. his horrendous morphine addiction
 * Briefcase Full of Money
 * Buried Alive: and
 * Burn Your Gays:
 * Call A Grotesque A Gargoyle: There's a difference, you know.
 * Can't Have Sex Ever: Well, not in this life.
 * Christmas Cake: Referenced by name in relation to Sayuri.
 * Church Militant: Agletrudis.
 * Circles of Hell: Literally.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Marianne Engel. Even if her stories are completely true, she's still quite weird - and she herself acknowledges this.
 * Complete Monster: Kuonrat.
 * Deadpan Snarker: The Narrator
 * Death By Childbirth: The Narrator's mother
 * Disabled Snarker: The Narrator, post-accident
 * Driven to Suicide: The Narrator fantasizes about a ridiculously elaborate suicide whilst in the hospital
 * Drugs Are Bad: In a way--they cause The Narrator's car crash, but he eventually considers that to have been a good thing, and when he detoxes from the morphine, So, not entirely bad...
 * But they're certainly bad in the case of The Narrator's adoptive "parents," who
 * Fancy Dinner: Marianne Engel organizes many of these.
 * Florence Nightingale Effect: Played with. In the hospital, Marianne Engel doesn't do anything directly medical for The Narrator, she just provides him with friendship and distraction. Later, at her home, though, she does care for her. Played straight in the 13-century storyline.
 * Foreign Looking Font: Used all over the place.
 * Full-Name Basis: Marianne Engel is almost always referred to by her full name. Though it
 * High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The Narrator's detailed descriptions of his accident and his injuries are pretty disturbing, especially when he urges the reader to imagine their own skin burning in seemingly slow-motion
 * Ho Yay: Sigurðr and Einarr; the Narrator and Brandeis
 * Hollywood Atheist: Avoided. The Narrator states early on that he doesn't believe in God, and while he certainly becomes more interested in theology and even, he doesn't change his mind.
 * And his reasons for not believing in God aren't anything as simple as Dead Little Sister or his traumatic childhood.
 * Incompatible Orientation:
 * Karma: Subverted--The Narrator's injuries sure seem like poetic justice, especially, but he states that since he's an atheist, he doesn't believe God or anything else was out to get him, his accident was just chance.
 * Littlest Burn Victim: Thérèse
 * Love Hurts: The image on that page is freakishly accurate.
 * Mad Artist
 * Mad Oracle
 * Man On Fire: Played REALLY, REALLY straight.
 * Manic Pixie Dream Girl: To the extreme.
 * Meaningful Rename: rename their child after
 * Mercy Kill: A few times: asks  to do this when  This is then echoed when  kills
 * Mission From God: Marianne Engel believes that she has been told
 * Near-Death Experience
 * Nerds Are Virgins: Wildly subverted with The Narrator, who claims to be a book lover
 * Never Found the Body:, and
 * No Fourth Wall: The Narrator regularly refers to "this story" and "this book" and addresses the reader directly, often acknowledging things that seem unbelievable or speculating about the reader's reaction to certain things.
 * No Name Given: We are never told the narrator's name, not even when
 * Nun-Too-Holy: Marianne Engel, in her 13th-century version.
 * Off With His Head: The fate of
 * Omniglot: Marianne Engel.
 * Pair the Spares:
 * Parental Neglect: The Graces are drug addicts and basically do nothing to raise The Narrator
 * Power Tattoo: Marianne Engel is covered in 'em
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old
 * Religious Horror: Lots, mostly
 * Rescue Romance: On several levels.
 * Ret-Gone: An in-universe example--Marianne's 13th-century work translating the Inferno was erased from history because
 * Scars Are Forever: The Narrator's burns, to be sure, but before that, the mysterious scar on his chest, which is later revealed to be
 * Seeking Sanctuary: Used a few times in the 13th century plot.
 * Shotgun Wedding:, although her parents aren't actually all that mad.
 * Shout-Out: Marianne Engel has sold her gargoyles to "one writer who is almost universally recognized as the king of the horror genre," as well as a "director known for his highly poetic films about outcasts" who has "a mop of wild dark hair" that resembles Marianne Engel's.
 * Shown Their Work: Davidson clearly did a shit-ton of research about burns and burn treatment.
 * Someone to Remember Him By: In the 13th-century story--subverted, kind of, because
 * Switching POV: The modern-day story is told by the unnamed burned man; the other stories are told by Marianne Engel, in the second person when she's telling him what she believes to be their story from another time. The "bitchsnake" (i.e., the evil part of the narrator's mind) also pops in with commentary now and again.
 * The Pornomancer: The Narrator is this before his accident, rather literally
 * The Power of Love
 * The Storyteller: Marianne Engel. Good grief.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Narrator's planned suicide is decidedly over-the-top, and is also rather elaborate and agonizing, leading to  Mercy Kill
 * To Hell and Back: Literally...well, sort of.
 * Unreliable Narrator: The burned man believes Marianne Engel to be this for a while, but...it's debatable
 * Widow Woman:
 * Wipe That Smile Off Your Face: The Narrator says this to the eternally cheerful Sayuri, complete with racist slur. (He apologizes, though.)
 * Funny thing was he WASN'T racist. Considering just how much the Narrator knows about Japan, it implies he's very interested in the Japanese culture. He just wanted to piss her off and thought that was the best way. (It wasn't.)
 * Funny thing was he WASN'T racist. Considering just how much the Narrator knows about Japan, it implies he's very interested in the Japanese culture. He just wanted to piss her off and thought that was the best way. (It wasn't.)