Our Score: ★★★★★★✩✩✩✩
GENRE: Gothic, Romance, Historical fiction
Selected by Gemma - April 2009
SYNOPSIS:
A young man is fighting for his life. Into his room walks a bewitching woman who believes she can save him. Their journey will have you believing in the impossible.
The nameless and beautiful narrator of The Gargoyle is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and wakes up in a burns ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned. His life is over - he is now a monster.
But in fact it is only just beginning. One day, Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles, enters his life and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly burned mercenary and she was a nun and a scribe who nursed him back to health in the famed monastery of Engelthal. As she spins her tale, Scheherazade fashion, and relates equally mesmerising stories of deathless love in Japan, Greenland, Italy and England, he finds himself drawn back to life - and, finally, to love.
(Synopsis taken from Amazon)
STORY BEHIND THE BOOK:
Gemma:
Ok, so whilst I would not class myself as being particularly vain, I do love a good book cover. I was very much drawn to this novel because of its looks and the black pages! Plus along with all the reviews I read I was very intrigued by this book and knew it must be my next book selection.
THE DISCUSSION (Contains spoilers): Wow, what an opening!!! It took us straight into the story with a dramatic bang. We found some of the description too ghastly especially when in hospital describing his disfigurement and burns. And then from nowhere appears Marianne. At first we didn't really know how we felt about her; a rather eccentric character, dressed in medieval style clothes and explaining how they had met before, in fact they had been former lovers. This added a whole unexpected new dimension to the book which excited us. Most of us loved reading the stories that Marianne would tell, we felt this added a fairy-tale element to the novel which softened some of harshness of the characters and themes within the book. Some of us found this quite a challenging read as it would flit between the main narrator, to Marianne's former life as a nun to Marianne's different love stories. At times we found the book to have almost a 'fantasy' element to it which wasn't to everybody's liking. Check out our individual comments and scores below.
REVIEW: (Contains spoilers)
Gemma's Thoughts:
Ultimately this is a story of friendship and love. Although I found it strange at times I really enjoyed it. I loved the way the stories of the past were mixed with the main story line; I loved hearing about the characters in these short stories and how they loved and lost which I found heart warming. There was plenty of vivid description along the way, which at times was gruesome. The nameless main character I grew to love even though he was probably a vile man before the accident. However, at the end I truly believed he was a changed man who had made friends through his journey of self discovery and had understood the true meaning of love. The ending left me wondering whether Marianne had indeed lived the life she claimed or had been good at researching the past in order to spin her tale. And the big question, was she mad??
Emma's Thoughts:
What's not to love with a book with black pages!
Ashlea's Thoughts:
This is a book I picked up knowing nothing about and read a hundred pages before I had to put it down for good. There was a lot of things I didn't enjoy about this book and life is too short to read books you dont like! Firstly, I think this is a man's book (which I have never used to describe a book before). It was gory, dark and gruesome. I didn't care for the characters and found the 'love stories' between them uninteresting and bizarre. Not a book I would ever consider picking up again and trying to read.
THE SCORES:
Emma: 8
Gemma: 7
Maria: 8
Nic: 5
Pamela: 5
Sandra: 5
Average 6
Let us know your thought about this book. We would love to read your reviews and know what you would score it.
If you enjoyed this book why not try:
Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert
The Rapture by Liz Jensen
The Snowman by Jo Nesbo
The Burning Air by Erin Kelly
The Girl with all the Gifts by M.R. Carey
Happy reading!
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