My sister called me yesterday evening and told me that if she checks my website one more time and finds that I haven’t updated it, bad things will happen.  Now, if you knew my sister, you would understand why this threat is comical at best.  However, she promised to ship me some things from back home, my glasses among them (I remembered my books and even my glasses case, but not the actual glasses themselves.  I have priorities, people.  Also, re: glasses case–’A’ for effort?), so you can understand why I’m more inclined to indulge her and acquiesce.

Except now I can’t think of anything to post that isn’t relevant to the fact that my sister went all Godfather on me.

Oh!  Ok.  I thought of something.

I rarely ever publicly endorse particular books.  This is in part due to the fact that it seems rather silly to write on books that have been around for decades or centuries, because you’ve probably already heard of them, and I’m hard-pressed to think of modern novels to endorse.  I can find books that I like, but rarely any that I can like for writing style, technique and plot.  You know, good literature, none of that dessert literature (mmm, mousse–my sister makes the world’s best mousse).

That being said, I stole one of my brother’s books to bring back to Boston with me.  He had told me I’d like it.  As it turns out, it is a huge understatement.  The book is amazing.

That book is The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson.

The several synopses online I read about the book before reading it do not do it justice.  The plot is infinitely better than the synopses suggest, beautifully woven together.  The writing itself is wonderful and eclectic; it is great at capturing low speech as well as high, and the author writes men and women equally well, another rarity.  The book is as much informative as it is whimsical, weaving in facts and languages without inundating the reader under the weight.  I know a lot of people read to escape, but the book is written in such a way that you can completely ignore the encyclopedic knowledge at your fingertips if you so wish.

Similarly, while most people aren’t nerds who slowly read and absorb the rhetorical and figurative devices, those things can easily be overlooked as well, but they’re in there, and it’s the first modern book in a long time that I can recall having read and enjoyed both for the writing and the story.

And the story–oh, the story.  It is beautiful.  I’ve no doubt that some of you will go search the synopsis of the story right now, and you may read it and be turned off because the main character is a pornographer, but I hope you won’t be.  Religion is a huge motif of the story.  Case in point: the other main character was a nun.  See?  Essentially, the book is a modern Inferno.

It is also a love story, and a beautiful one at that.  It is nice to read a book that is written by someone who can recognize the sensual value of a chaste kiss and carry it out.  The irony in that is that the effect was far more sensual than anything I’ve read in a long time, simply because it’s not the standard for adult literature.  It’s refreshingly non-salacious.  It also means I could actually focus on the plot, which was great, because this book actually had one.

I highly suggest you read the book.  It is a wonderful first book, the kind of first book every author endeavors to write.  I look forward to reading Mr Davidson’s future novels.

(In case you have the misconception that this website carries the sort of tout worthy of paid endorsement, that’s not the case.  No one in his right mind would pay me to review a product.  I have the stats to prove it.)

Also, if Andrew Davidson is reading this–email me.