Andrew Davidson Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Andrew Davidson spent seven years writing his debut novel, The Gargoyle. In this interview he discusses how he researched and wrote this book.

Interview

You spent seven years writing The Gargoyle, a novel begun in your thirties. What was your starting point?
When I first moved to Japan, teaching English and writing for Japanese Web sites, I wrote a series of letters to a close friend. In these letters, a character started to pop up in the correspondence, taking it over whenever she could wrestle away control of my pen. She arrived with wild hair and blue-green eyes, ranting in front of a church, and her name arrived with her: Marianne Engel. She just kept jabbing at me until I consented to give her more attention. It was clear that she would inhabit a novel.

At the time I was struck with a curiosity about the treatment of severe burn survivors. I recognize that this might seem somewhat specialized and peculiar, but it was directly related to an idea I had for the starting point of a story. I imagine that everyone has had a relationship end and experienced the feeling of having “been burned.” It is a clichéd image, to be sure, but it is a cliché because it is apt and true. I was intrigued by the idea of a relationship that did not end with the feeling of being burned, but one that began with such a feeling–taken to the most ...