Author Andrew Davidson. (Deborah Feingold/Random House Canada)

In Andrew Davidson’s new novel, a suicidal burn victim meets an enigmatic woman named Marianne Engel. She arrives at his hospital bedside with flashing green-blue eyes, wild hair and an even wilder claim: that they were lovers in 14^th-century Germany. A chronicle of time-transcending love that survives the fires of hell, The Gargoyle is larger than life.

The novel’s own birth has epic dimensions. Combining the lush pleasures of a summer page-turner with arcane information and ambitious themes, Davidson’s manuscript prompted comparisons to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. A bidding war ignited in the summer of 2007, with Doubleday paying out $1.25 million US, and rights sold in 20 countries. The advance hype has been bolstered by some strong early reviews. (Janet Maslin of the New York Times calls the book “transportingly unhinged.”) Heady stuff for a debut novelist.

In a recent interview, the 39-year-old Winnipegger acknowledged the fairy-tale arc of his publishing story. “It’s fantastic and beyond anything I would have dared to dream,” says Davidson, who taught English in Japan for five years before returning to Manitoba in 2005. “But at the same time, it’s a fairy tale that comes after seven or eight years of hard work and 20 years of writing every day, for free.”

A lot of labour went into Davidson’s research. Take The Gargoyle’s gut-grabbing opening sequence, in which the coked-up central character crashes his car and then describes, with dry detachment, the way his body catches fire. In describing the nameless narrator’s trauma and recovery, Davidson uses vivid, propulsive language to convey close-packed, highly technical information about the nature of burn injuries. (The narrator talks about how he has “plumped up like a freshly roasted wiener, my skin cracking to accommodate the expanding meat.”)

“I looked at burn manuals, online information about burn treatments, medical journals, books and books and books,” says Davidson. “Whatever I could get hold of.” He also corresponded with a burn-survivor who writes a blog and was, according to Davidson, “unbelievably kind with her time.”

Between agonizing medical treatments, the narrator – and the reader – are distracted by Marianne’s stories of tragic lovers, from Victorian England to Italy in the time of the Black Plague; from feudal Japan to the Iceland of the Vikings. Davidson’s vast research shows when Marianne begins speaking of her (possible) past life; the author also dives into the intricacies of medieval German mysticism and the origins of Dante’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy.

(Random House Canada)

The Gargoyle examines spiritual themes through the viewpoint of Davidson’s skeptical, cynical, wisecracking narrator. In a key sequence, the protagonist experiences a Dante-esque vision of Hell, complete with rotting rivers of half-human flesh, “as if a thousand years of coffins had been emptied into congealed blood.” Is it a divine revelation of sin and possible salvation or the effects of morphine withdrawal? Is Marianne, who makes a living by carving gargoyles, working through a centuries-long penance or is she mentally ill?

“It’s better to leave the reader with interesting questions,” Davidson suggests. “How old is Marianne — late 30s or 700 years? It’s up to the reader to decide.”

The novel also displays a spectrum of love. “The tales Marianne tells of her ghostly friends, they’re like fairy tales, there’s that mythic quality,” Davidson points out. “To write them, you can use the grand gestures of love and how it’s displayed – like standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean for decades.”

“But that isn’t the way love is in our everyday lives,” Davidson admits. That’s why he also includes the shy, hesitant romance of two of the narrator’s medical attendants, who do completely ordinary things like going on movie dates. “They’re living in the real world, just trying to find someone to love them,” Davidson says.

As he juggles the sacred and the profane, Davidson’s inspirations veer from the highly literary to the broadly populist. “As far as novelists, my favourite writer is Thomas Hardy. Reading him is pure joy,” suggests Davidson. “Well, as much as it can be in entering a universe where fate crushes you,” he adds, laughing. “But then I also love Tom Robbins, who really couldn’t be farther away.”

Davidson, who graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in English literature, likes what he calls “technical challenges.” His lovers’ tales hinge on the four classical elements: earth, water, fire and air. The first and last letters of the chapters form acrostics. The book is crammed with puzzles, parallels and plays on words. (Davidson cites the tricky Vladimir Nabokov as another influence.)

To assist readers as they navigate Davidson’s verbal labyrinth, the Doubleday website features an extensive guide. “While the word gargoyle is related to a French word meaning gargle, the word grotesque (a non-aquatic gargoyle) is derived from the Old Italian grottesco, meaning cave paintings,” the guide offers helpfully. Other questions seem more likely to draw book club members into deep, difficult late-night discussions. (“How do you personally reconcile the concept of a loving God with the reality of human suffering?”)

Davidson, who’s more or less a publicity virgin, is currently preparing for a big international media tour. “I have a calendar at the moment where I have chunks of time set aside. It’s quite common to open it and see a week that just says ‘Germany,’” says Davidson. “And I have no more information than that.”

Meanwhile, having started some fires with his astonishing debut, Davidson is working on a second novel. Not surprisingly, he’s heavily into the research stages. “I think I have 300 pages of notes and a couple of pages of prose that I absolutely know are going to be thrown out.”

The Gargoyle is published by Doubleday and is in stores now.

Alison Gillmor is a writer based in Winnipeg.