'Love is as strong as death, as hard as Hell. Death separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul.' -- Meister Eckhart

A young man, a porn star and executive of his own production company, high on coke and alcohol, comes off a road, the car catches fire and he comes to many weeks later in a burns unit. He is very badly burnt. His only interest in recovery is so that he can get out and kill himself.

That is until a strange woman, Marianne Engel, walks into his ward and starts chatting to him. She claims to know him, to have been born in 1300 and to have grown up in a monastery. She carves gargoyles, or as she would have it, liberates them from the rocks. She takes instructions from three masters who she talks to.

A very strange novel.

Shortlisted for Richard and Judy British Book Awards 2009.

Also read:

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse [see BCID 5830417]

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova [see BCID 6689517]

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk [see BCID 6638115]

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe [see BCID 7055594]

The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso) by Dante Alighieri

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse [see BCID 7055590]

Veronika Decides to Die by Paul Coelho [see BCID 6490146]

The Valkyries by Paul Coelho [see BCID 7045546]

The Pilgrimage by Paul Coelho [see BCID 5849563]

Brida by Paul Coelho [see BCID 6974601]

A Partisan's Daughter by Louis De Bernieres [see BCID 7027100]