Surprisingly, I didn't mind that the book jumped around in time and I liked the storyline until I got to the last quarter of the book. It was at this point that the plot "jumped the shark" and had me scratching my head trying to figure out how it all tied together.

I really enjoyed this book. Some passages were a bit slower, but in general I enjoyed the switching of timelines.
The end wasn't quite satisfying for me, but there wasn't really much more to add.
It was full of interesting references, so I will consider reading up on those.
A "funny" coincidence was that, during finishing the book, I knocked over a big cup of tea and spilled it all over my leg (on the first day of my summer holiday!).

Easily my favorite book ever written. First couple of chapters can be hard to get through because they're highly graphic (spoiler: narrator intimately discusses what it feels like to slowly burn in a car). The other stories that go along with the main plot add life and color to the dreary world of a hospital's burn unit, and Marianne is a spectacularly complicated character. Highly recommended by me and the girl who put it in my hands to begin with.

This book has some excellent ideas, and some really good passages, but the overall style felt dumbed-down to me, a little larger than life, a little unrealistic. Maybe I'm just getting snobbier and more literary as I get older, but it rarely felt like I was really there, really experiencing what was happening to a real person. It mostly felt like I was reading a book. I spent a lot of time trying to work out if the style was deliberate or not; whether it was an attempt to target a mainstream audience, or a genuine preference for that kind of writing, or just the fact that not everyone can write like Margaret Atwood or Kazuo Ishiguro.

I also got the impression that the author didn't really 'get' some of the traits/contexts of the main character -- his drugs, his pornography career -- to me, the descriptions and way these were worked in didn't ring true. It seemed like they were written about from little to no personal experience and perhaps not enough research. Some of the time the narration seemed to be trying too hard to be clever with imagery and similes, at the cost of drawing me away from what was actually happening, and the character himself.

It's a shame because some of the ideas around the premise could have worked really well. Also, some of the no-holds-barred medical descriptions of a burn victim's experiences were visceral, and gripping. There were places -- particularly in the narration of various legends or myths or fairytales of certain minor characters -- where a different style was adopted. In these parts, there wasn't really a need for realism; it was accepted that the edges were being glossed over, the style was just right, and these parts were the most engaging of the book. I wonder if the author should focus on a whole book of this kind, moving away from attempting to portray the realistic, the everyday.

This is a book I probably would've loved when much younger. I guess I really am no longer the target audience for something like this. You wonder sometimes if a Richard and Judy Book Award is a badge of mainstream-ness in a negative sense, but books like The Time Traveller's Wife and Cloud Atlas manage very well to maintain that mainstream appeal while giving enough of the real, the moments, the character, the proper old-fashioned writing craft, to transport me, to make me believe in it all, however unbelievable the plot, and for me, that's the bar everyone should be looking to clear.

Awesome. I loved the different stories of the lovers.

Oh, how I want to succumb to the peer pressure and say I liked this book. Even as the pages were dwindling I kept waiting for "it". I kept thinking okay, something's going to happen and I'm going to say "Aaahh... this is why everyone loves this book". But, sadly, it didn't happen. And sorry to the Gargoyle lovers out there (and I really am sorry), but I just didn't get it. And I think mostly the problem was I just didn't care. While I would probably give the writing a 4 or 5 star, the storyline and the characters were lackluster. There was no conflict whatsoever to propel the story along. Some of the "mini" stories within the book were far better than the main one- like the widow awaiting on the cliff for her husband lost at sea- now that one kept me turning the pages, so while there were moments of redemption, I would file the majority of the book under Things That Make Me Go Hmmm? And Marianne Engel just really made me want to hurl. What- she's schizo, bi-polar, a time traveler? Do we ever really get an answer? She's loaded because she carves gargoyles who talk to her from the stone and she has to do it in the nude? And ignores the guy she supposedly loves who is a recovering burn victim and who she promised she'd take care of if he came home with her? I actually started liking the main character MORE because he had to put up with HER. She just wasn't a believable character to me.

I guess this is one of those love it or hate it kind of books, which ultimately makes for intense discussion and I'm all for that.

That being said, I do think Mr. Davidson is quite talented and I would probably give him the benefit of the doubt if he writes another novel. Perhaps he should write a collection of short stories since the ones in the book were so good.

A beautiful story of love which unfortunately is a bit too much to take by the end. The reader never really doubts that Marianne is telling the truth, because that would be a huge letdown. The reader also never doubts that she and the narrator will both confess their love by the end. Perhaps my expectations were too high, who knows? I never heard any of the hype to which other reviewers have referred. It was all awfully romantic, though. I can't deny that.