Uptown Magazine Online - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

August 14, 2008


	Get your copy! Find the Uptown Magazine pickup location nearest you.

2008-08-14

An impressive debut, indeed

Local author Andrew Davidson sold his first (!) book for over $1 million - but he hasn't let it go to his head

Quentin Mills-Fenn

That guy in the corner at a Corydon hangout sold his debut novel for $1.25 million.

Andrew Davidson is quiet, funny, and dressed in black. His novel, The Gargoyle, has just been published by Random House Canada (it was Doubleday in the U.S. which anted up the huge advance) and it's coming out in more than 20 other countries. The Gargoyle is gothic, romantic and gory - and it's one of the most talked-about literary debuts in the world. Last week, some 125,000 copies went on sale in the U.S. alone.

Not bad for a guy who used to write bad poetry in Pinawa.

Davidson spent the first 18 years of his life in that planned community, and he's still got happy, sunny memories of the place.

"I don't think I could come up with a better place to grow up," he says. "I think I'm in regular contact with at least half of my graduating class 21 years later.

"It's a beautiful town," he adds. "There's hockey rinks and ski trails. There's also quite an emphasis on education in Pinawa.

"Every year in the middle of summer, they have a festival and I always make a point of going back there."

It's some distance from the Whiteshell to a tale of hellfire, artistic obsession and undying love.

The Gargoyle's unnamed narrator is a drug addict and porn star who suffers a horrific car crash in the first few pages. What follows is a grueling description of his burns and painful rehabilitation. (About this part of the book, Davidson says, "The comment I get is 'I didn't want to read this but I couldn't stop.'")

Then an odd and beautiful woman shows up in the narrator's hospital room. Her name is Marianne Engel and she tells a series of stories, like a burn ward Scheherazade. She also mentions that the two first met 700 years ago in a German convent. But what else would you expect from a sculptor of gargoyles and other assorted grotesques?

"Gargoyles," says Davidson, "are cool.

"That's where Marianne Engel took me. The book started with her. And from the first time I thought of her, I thought to myself 'What does she do for a living?' And there was no doubt, a sculptor of gargoyles.

"And that was before she took me to medieval Germany. That's the curse of an active imagination: you keep making more work for yourself."

The novel travels hundreds of years and thousands of miles. It goes to hell (description nicked from Dante's Inferno) and takes in tales from Italy, Iceland, and Japan.

"I was such a big reader," Davidson says. "I read everything, a lot of biography. I was a very average Canadian kid. I read books about hockey and bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster."

Davidson studied English literature, and then computers and media, which helped him avoid getting a job. Then, living in Vancouver, he decided it was time for a big change, and he moved to Japan.

"I went to Japan because I was about to turn 30 and had never been abroad," he says. "It seemed like a good idea. I went with the idea that I would stay for a yea, and when it was all said and done I was there for five years."

Davidson lived and taught in more than a dozen different cities, from up in Hokkaido to down in Okinawa. He ended up in Tokyo for three years, writing English lessons for Japanese students.

"I completely love the country," he says. "It's beautiful. It's also interesting, with the juxtaposition of the old and the new.

"And the people are exceptionally kind and polite, and that appealed to my Canadian instincts," he adds. "I think the world would be a better place if everyone spent some time as a visible minority."

Davidson is modest and nonplussed when he talks about his book's stunning reception.

"Certainly it's more than I ever expected it to be. And if I had been imagining all that attention, how foolish I would have been.

"I've always had an interest in writing," he adds, "but seriously since I was 16. That's when I figured out I wasn't going to make it in the NHL.

"All I wanted was to entertain myself with writing. I wrote for a long, long time before this. I like writing; it's what I do. It's the way I learn."

Current Issue • Archive • What’s Up • Contact • Media Kit • Contests