Burning up the bestseller charts

Some people might be overwhelmed by a $1.25m (£700,000) advance for their first novel, but for the Canadian author Andrew Davidson his startling success feels like a gradual journey.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson 502, Canongate Books, £16.99 "It's sort of a case of being an overnight success," he explains, "but I've been writing for 20 years, started this book in 2000, got an agent in 2006, and have been dealing with the publishing industry for the last 18 months."

Published in the US and Canada on August 5, The Gargoyle is number one in Canada and riding high on the New York Times bestseller list – just the kind of spectacular performance which will reassure Davidson's British publisher, Canongate, that their record six-figure advance was a safe bet.

It's a rip-roaringly original piece of writing which centres on the relationship between a drug-addled pornographer who has been severely burned, and a beautiful former nun who believes their romance began 700 years ago. Comparisons range from The Secret History and The Name of the Rose to Life of Pi and Possession – it's clearly hard to categorise. The book opens with the unnamed narrator undergoing a gruesomely explicit car crash, during the course of which his toes are severed, his leg broken and most of his body suffers severe burns. "My flesh began to singe as if I were a scrap of meat newly thrown onto the barbecue, and then I could hear the bubbling of my skin as the flames kissed it… My penis was like a candle sticking


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