I must start by saying I resigned from my local Cambs library readers'group because of this book! It was chosen by the group leader for us to read and discuss but before we could take it home one of the group opened it at a random page and read what she described as 'nothing but utter filth'. The rest of the group (who are mostly younger than me) followed suit and all condemned the book without giving it a chance and returned it unread! Such prudery and narrow mindedness annoys me, how can you discuss a book objectively with such bigots?
I therefore purchased the book on Kindle and read it for myself. It's a wonderful tale with a very unlikely hero and an interesting heroine. Some really delicious food detail, a very diverse and different story line with just enough mythical dashes. It's both graphic and heart-warming and does not contain any material to purposefully shock the reader but it does have descriptions of treatment of horrific burn injuries and a couple of paragraphs referring to the embarrasment of teenage sexual awakenings and their consequences. These are part and parcel of the story.
The novel begins with the narrator being involved in a car accident where the car goes up in flames. He is in a hospital burns unit for some time and it's this early part of the book that we learn of his sad early life and background.
Marianne Engel, a famous sculptress of gargoyles, shows up at his bedside one day and tells him that they were lovers in medieval Germany. She claims that he was a mercenary and that she was a multilingual scribe. He doesn't really have much faith in this claim, but is mesmerized by Marianne. The stories she tells are very engaging and it's these that got me entranced in this book. There are many background stories involving the other characters who surround our (un-named) narrator during his long spell in hospital and I was particularly taken by that of his Japanese physiotherapist.
It's not a book to be read quickly, but rather more contemplatively. One of the major themes is of redemption and there are many references to Dante's Inferno. I hope I have said enough to get those of you who haven't read it, and who aren't prejudiced or biased, to give it a go.
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