Now Reading: Andrew Davidson's THE GARGOYLE (Pre-Read)
So I joined a Book of the Month Club recently, I figured my love for books at this stage warrants joining one. It's kind of a NetFlix for Books, and the titles are great, actually. I pay ten bucks minus shipping/handling fees and I get one from my compiled list. Just like I would in any fine used bookstore or library, I go peruse through my options meticulously. What did I want to read as my first book? You see, work and personal damas have lessen my reading time. I miss the days I could languish in reading something great, wake up in the morning looking forward to the next chapters; when I was younger I got so engaged with the books I read that sometimes I would come home from school and mistakenly believe I was missing out on taping a show...much to my surprise, I realized it was the book I was reading earlier in the week whose plot kept me in suspense. It's weird, I know, but that's the magic of reading. If you allow your imagination and attention to hone in on a good story, it's as good as any movie...it's actually better.
After debating between the standard horror genres like Stephen King or YA paranormal tale like "Beautiful Creatures", I stumbled upon a highly reviewed book called "The Gargoyle" by Andrew Davidson. The buzz around the book seemed familiar, but I never got a chance to read the synopsis. I was, shallowly enough, intrigued by the cover art.
SYNOPSIS
(knof-doubleday.com)
The Gargoyle: the mesmerizing story of one man’s descent into personal hell and his quest for salvation.
On a dark road in the middle of the night, a car plunges into a ravine. The driver survives the crash, but his injuries confine him to a hospital burn unit. There the mysterious Marianne Engel, a sculptress of grotesques, enters his life. She insists they were lovers in medieval Germany, when he was a mercenary and she was a scribe in the monastery of Engelthal. As she spins the story of their past lives together, the man’s disbelief falters; soon, even the impossible can no longer be dismissed.
Past lives, grotesque gargoyles, and a love story? It sounded odd and the sort of thing that I could go for right now. The thing is that if I'm going to jump back into reading without any brakes, I might as well kick the door open. I have only started a couple of pages of the book, but Davidson's narrative is oddly entrancing, a very fatalistic sort of despair, but I can't seem to get it out of my mind. The first words of the book, have stayed with me:
"Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love."