The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time

About this book

Sixteen years have passed since Steven Sherrill first introduced us to M the selfsame Minotaur from Greek mythology transplanted to the modern American South in the critically acclaimed The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break. M has moved north now from a life of kitchens and trailer parks to that of Civil War re-enactor at a run-down living history park in the dying blue-collar rustbelt of central Pennsylvania. Though he dies now in uniform on a regular basis Ms world his daily struggles remain unchanged. Isolation. Loneliness. Other-ness. Shepherded cared for by the Guptas (the immigrant family who runs the motel where he lives outsiders in their own right) and tolerated by his neighbors by most of his coworkers at Old Scald Village but tormented by a few M wants only to find love and understanding. The serendipitous arrival of Holly and her damaged brother halted on their own journey of loss stirs hope in the Minotaurs life. As their paths overlap we find ourselves rooting for the old bull as he stumbles toward a real live human relationship. Steven Sherrill is a graduate of UNC Charlotte and holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop. The recipient of a NEA Fellowship for Fiction he has published four novels and one book of poetry. His debut novel The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break was published in the UK and translated into eight languages. Neil Gaiman selected it as one of six audio books to launch Neil Gaiman Presents for Audible.com. A prolific painter and nascent musician Sherrill is now a professor of English & Integrative Arts at Penn State Altoona. "Sherrill gives his Minotaur a forlorn Buster Keaton dignity. M has a silent films starring role in the midst of a country-and-western talkie. Precisely by limiting the beast to deeds not speech the writer eventually createsagainst all oddsa living hybridized contradiction. M if stuck in the quicksand of our ticky-tack present somehow still participates in the silent scale of myth." The New York Times