The Gargoyle
“Could a debut novel about a drug-addicted porn star, burned to a crisp in a fiery car crash, be one of the year’s hottest books?” – USA Today
Todays USA Today profiles Andrew Davidson’s debut novel, The Gargoyle. The book took seven years to write, is rich in historical detail and has numerous references to Dante’s Inferno, according to Carol Memmot of USA Today.
According to a piece in New York Magazine last year, The Gargoyle is a densely packed story about a car-accident victim in the burn ward befriended by a mysterious woman who claims to be a stone carver in a fifteenth-century German abbey. The narrative moves back and forth in time from the woman’s tales to the present day and incorporates the story of the first German translation of Dante. We’ve been told it’s an excellent page-turner, though one publishing insider said it felt overly calculated, “like someone sat down to write the bastard love child of The Birth of Venus and The English Patient.”
The buzz around this book began last year when Doubleday acquired the book for $1.25 million. Will it live up to that hefty price tag? We will have to wait until August 5th, when the book is released, to make our own conclusions.
