Ultimately going to become my favorite book of the year!
I sat down this morning to read some of this book, and read for 7 hours, only stopping to nip to the supermarket and to eat tea. Its amazing, really powerful.
The book is about a burns victim, he is in a car crash, his own coke-induced fault, which leads to immense burning of his hole body - the descriptions of the burns on the first 10 pages is horrific, and nearly made me put the book down. He goes from being a pornographic cassonova, with his own company and party lifestyle, to a guy completely dependent on others for his every need.
Into the ward, and into his life walk Marianne Engel calmly announcing that she has been looking for him for the last 700 years, since they were last lovers.
Marianne is Schizophrenic/manic depressive/ genius/ fantastic story-teller. She recounts their life together, plus telling him tales of various other connected figures, and folk tales while helping him with his treatment and taking him into her own care. She is a compulsive sculptor, working into a frenzy when God talks to her and tells her what to create.
The book is full of knowledge, of burns, religion, myth, Dante's Inferno (which I so want to read now!), and schizophrenia but everything is delivered so you can understand. It felt like a cross between The Time Traveller's Wife (my fav book) and The End of Mr Y.
Read for the RIP III challenge (book 9/4)
Other Readers
If you have read this please leave a link to your review in the comments and I'll add the link to the post
4 comments:
I want to re-read Inferno now that I'm reading The Gargoyle, too! And I'm glad someone else thought of The Time Traveler's Wife as well. I thought I was a little nutty for thinking that comparison at first. It also reminded me of Timothy Findley's novel, Pilgrim.
I haven't read this one but see that you have linked to my blog for The Stolen Child and wanted to thank you. I love the look of your blog and you have some great reviews. I hope you drop by mine again soon.
I read this book too, and like you, LOVED it!!! It's one to be added to my very favorites :-)
Thanks for another great review of this. I rally must get a copy.
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