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The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break: A Novel

Description

Five thousand years out of the Labyrinth, the Minotaur finds himself in the American South, living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at a steakhouse. No longer a devourer of human flesh, the Minotaur is a socially inept, lonely creature with very human needs. But over a two-week period, as his life dissolves into chaos, this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and to the capacity for love.

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-05
Summary: "Clever and compelling..."

Like nothing I've ever read. Brilliant and profound. Myth and reality co-exist and occasionally clash in a phantasmagorical first novel.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2008-07-25
Summary: "A Tragic, Heartwarming Tale"

After 5,000 years, the Minotaur has established himself as a line cook in the south, residing in a small trailer park. Out of the labyrinth, he has become a docile and somewhat unassuming figure, only standing out due to his appearance. His is a life of solitude, though he enjoys the companionship of his co-workers and neighbors. However, he is distanced from everyone due to his physical differences, and even he cannot relate to humanity. He is a patient being, preferring routine and working with his hands.

This novel plays the Minotaur as a tragic figure, always having to compensate for his inadequacies and being generally viewed as a freak or monster. The book follows him as he plods along on seemingly normal days, running errands, at work in the kitchen, fixing cars, observing his neighborhood, and even pursuing a relationship with a waitress from the restaurant, Kelly. Of course, good intentions can be misconstrued by narrow-minded people and the overall conflicts the Minotaur face is due primarily to his unfortunate appearance. My only wish is that Sherrill had elaborated on the Minotaur's history. He does mention his time in the labyrinth, but a creature who has roamed the earth for 5,000 years surely has extraordinary tales to tell.

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Rating: 2 / 5
Date: 2008-03-10
Summary: "Good Premise, Underdeveloped Story"

I cracked the 'Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break' with an eagerness and fervor that I reserve for very few books, which might be one reason why I was so disappointed. It's a book of many neat ideas that just don't pan out.

This book starts with the question "what if the Minotaur, among other classic mythological creatures, were forced to live in our society," and doesn't go very far with it. We follow the minotaur as he works in a Southern steakhouse and on his rundown car, and listen to his internal monologue about his relationships with the people in his life.

From the start of the book, it seemed that the people accepted the Minotaur as a slow-witted human, which opened up an overarching theme of society's perceptions of outcasts. I found this to be creative and exciting: "people overlooking reality based on preconceptions, etc, etc."

I soon realized that I was looking way to deep into this. It turns out that everyone just sees him as a giant bull-headed man. They make jokes about his horns. They talk about branding. They moo.

Instead of speaking in words and sentences, the Minotaur only grunts and moans to communicate. His dialog is literally 90% the word "Mhnnn." This was another neat idea that gets annoying when every conversation becomes one-sided narration.

The Minotaur runs into a couple mythological characters throughout the story, but like so much else in the book, their interactions don't go anywhere. This was one of the biggest disappointments. There is so much to pursue here- the relationships between mythological creatures, those with that common, ancient bond, forced to live in our modern society- and yet the author skips right over it. He also skips over why these creatures can't use their powers to get better jobs (Medusa as a $1 side-show attraction. Great.), why they are not famous (even though they appear in encyclopedias), or even how the Minotaur survived his death at Theseus' hands.

Homosexual themes appear throughout the book, but also go nowhere. Is the author trying to approach the topic of homosexuality in the southern United States? Is he searching for parallels of homosexuality in mythology and modern society? Does he just like to describe muscular men in tight underwear? It's really unclear.

The final thirty pages of the book seem rushed and lost what little faith I had left. It's like someone forced the author to condense a hundred page ending into three brief chapters. It breaks from the meandering story and I found it really hard to swallow (in a book about a Minotaur chef, which is saying a lot).

Overall, the author had a lot of great ideas, but he simply failed to develop them. That's probably the most reccuring aspect of this book: storylines, ideas, themes that don't come anywhere close to their potential.

If the idea of defunct gods in modern society interests you, I recommend American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It examines in greater detail the relationships and ideas skimmed by this book.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2007-06-12
Summary: "Surreal; There's a bit of Freak in all of us"

This was a most intriguing book - I would go so far as to say it could easily become a classic of modern surreal literature. The Minotaur survives to this day, where he is a cook in a restaurant somewhere in North Carolina. Other immortals live and work among the mortals, such as Laurel, who is met during a trip to Florida taken by M and his landlord Sweeney. Interestingly, it seems that while people are occasionally taken aback by the Minotaur's appearance, no one seems terribly surprised by his presence.

I felt that, to me, this work spoke to the fact that there is within all of us a little bit of the freak that causes us to feel outcast and alone; this allows us to empathize with M. He lives very much in the "now" and has tended to forget much of his past and this is shown - among other ways - by the use of present tense in the narrative. M's search for love and acceptance is heart-breaking and heart-warming at the same time.

Definitely an interesting bit of literature for anyone who is looking to broaden their horizons a bit.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2005-07-19
Summary: "Very briefly, a bit of a disappointment"

I was fascinated by the premise of this novel but felt that it wasted many opportunities, passing over what struck me as fascinating narrative sidelines (the other survivors of the mythological world who cross the Minotaur's path) with an odd incuriosity. Sherrill does a fine job of building a vivid picture of the world in which the Minotaur lives - it's just a pity that what happens in it isn't terribly interesting. In a similar vein (mythological beings living in the modern world) I preferred Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which is less of a literary novel but considerably more sympathetic and entertaining.