num_pages: 468
description: The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic physically beautiful and sexually adept who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens he 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 suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward undergoing the tortures of the damned he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicidefor he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul. A beautiful and compelling but clearly unhinged sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan Iceland Italy and England he finds himself drawn back to lifeand finally in love.He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to completeand her time on earth will be finished.
language: English
title: The Gargoyle
publisher: Doubleday