The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

This is the first book I read for the R.I.P. challenge, and it was an excellent time!  I'd summarize the plot for you, but I'm terrible at that sort of thing, so here's the blurb from the book jacket:

The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life.  As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows.  He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body.  as he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide - for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany.  In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health.  As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life - and, finally, in love.  He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house.  But all is not well.  For one thing, the pull o fhis past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive.  For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete - and her time on earth will be finished.

Sounds good, eh?  And it was!  From the dramatic opening in which I watched the nameless narrator become encased in flames, to his bitter struggle for survival, to his dismissive yet enraptured encounters with Marianne, the story had me hooked immediately.  The writing is exceptional and made two unlikely characters (a schizophrenic and a pornographer) somehow sympathetic and believable.  Although Marianne's stories seem completely fantastic, I found myself believing - or wanting to believe - every word.  As did the narrator.  Despite his undying devotion to logic and proof, and his constant insistence on her insanity and the "fact" that none of her stories could possibly be true, I think in the end his heart acknowledged what his mind refused.

My one problem with the book was that it didn't seem to fit the challenge.  It's not exactly horror, or suspense, or gothic, or any other related genre.  It wasn't spooky, darn it.  Towards the end it did veer into the realm of the supernatural, with Dante's Inferno playing a significant role in the storyline, but that was about it.  However, that is my only gripe with the book.  I highly recommend it.