Book Rec
If your reading list for the next few months isn't full yet, get Andrew Davison's The Gargoyle.

I forced myself to read slowly and not everything in one go and it still only lasted four days. The book is ugly. It's detailed and gruesome and not for the faint of heart. And it's beautiful and slow and aching and the words are art. By far the best book I've read since Ink and the new number three on my favorite list.

The Gargoyle is about a man getting burned in a car accident. He used to be beautiful and rich, a pornostar and drug addict. He used to be perfectly decadent and decadently perfect. Now all that's left is the 'Holocaust of his skin' and the bitchsnake in his spine. Then Marianne Engel shows up. She's a patient from the psych ward in the hospital he lies in and she tells him stories of their past life together, seven hundred years ago. And somewhere along the line, she saves his soul, slowly, bit by bit.

If you do read it, pay attention to the symbols. Every tiny thing comes back, is repeated, is giving a myriad of meanings that make it all so perfect. Religion plays a big part, but not in the way that usuall bugs me. It's faith and symbols more than Christianity in this story and *le sigh*, just go buy that book, will ya?