The Gargoyle

By Don Ellis, martiniboys.com

Page 2 of 2

From there on, Marianne spins her mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy and England. He begins to learn more about Marianne. She is a sculptress, but she's also a temporary psychiatric patient at the hospital. Still, after seeing the angel wings on her bare back, our burn victim starts to fall for her. He is also taken by her enchanting style as she doles out riveting stories in little doses.

Eventually, he is released into Marianne's care and ensconced at her stone fortress, where she carves gargoyles that sell for top dollar in an elite market. But all is not well in gargoyle-eria. For one thing, the weight of his shadowy past becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he takes becomes ever more addictive. For another, he learns that Marianne endows each of her gargoyles with a heart from her large but limited supply of hearts inside her. And the last heart is slated for him.

Influenced by a few of the author's favorite authors -Vladimir Nabokov, Patrick Süskind and Jasper Fforde - the literary story-within-a-story formula has at times a what-the-hell, nihilistic quality. But if you can bypass the supposedly witty narrative, the Gargoyle is a perfectly good coke-addicted porn-star-meets-stone-carver tale.

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