Product 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #289967 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull supposedly slain by Theseus in the labyrinth, is actually working as a cook at Grub's Rib in a small town in North Carolina. Or so Sherrill conjectures in his clever debut novel, which thrusts the fabulous beast into the kitchen sink realism of 1990s America. In Sherrill's bold imagination, the Minotaur is no longer angry or ferocious, having been worn down by 3,000 years of history. Although people are often startled by his horns, the blue-collar world in which he now exists quickly adjusts to his presence. Sweeny, the owner of the Lucky-U trailer park where the Minotaur lives, employs him part-time to repair cars. The Minotaur spends his free hours watching his neighbors, among whom are an amateur muscle freak, Hank, and his sexy wife, Josie. At the restaurant, the other employees accept the Minotaur as he is, except for Shane and Mike, a duo of obnoxious young waiters who also razz David, the restaurant manager, for being gay. The Minotaur is sometimes hindered physically in the human world; his eyes, for example, are separated so broadly by his snout that he has to cock his head to one side to really look at something. Sherrill also insinuates other mythological beasts--the Hermaphroditus, the Medusa--into the story, suggesting how the Southern landscape is shadowed by these myths. The plot centers around the Minotaur's feelings for Kelly, a waitress who is prone to epileptic fits. Does she reciprocate his affections? As the reader might expect, the course of interspecies love never does run smooth. Sherrill's narrative, with its dreamlike pace, shows myth coexisting with reality as naturally as it does in ancient epic. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The Minotaur, having endured 5000 years of immortality, is currently living in a trailer park in the Deep South, working as a line cook in a restaurant. His appearance is more monstrous than his behavior, which is more humane than that of most of his co-workers. Coping within the limitations imposed on his existence--horns that are deadly, inarticulateness, a disproportionate body ill-adapted for clothes--the Minotaur has learned to sew and become an expert auto mechanic and a superb cook. It is dealing with people that poses the greatest difficulties. When love becomes a possibility, he must negotiate a path, threatened by the malevolence of the restaurant waiters and supported by the kindness of his landlord and friends. First novelist Sherrill skillfully creates a world in which the reader is more than willing to suspend disbelief to see the man in the monster and the monstrous in all of us. Recommended for larger public libraries and academic fiction collections.
-Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

USA TODAY 4/7/00
"Billiant imagination...Every page is a delight worth savoring for a millenium or two."

Customer Reviews

New voice in fiction serves up superb starter!
The startling collocation of the mythic "Minotaur" and the banal "Takes A Cigarette Break" in the arresting title, hints at the unusual premise set up by Sherill in his sad, funny, original debut novel locating a mythical creature - trying to jettison his gory past - in present day America's Deep South where he longs to fulfil his life and put his savage past behind him.

Then: the Minotaur lived in a labyrinth and ate virgins. Now: five thousand years on, the Minotaur, M, bull-headed but man-bodied, lives in a trailer in the Lucky-U Park. The novel, written in an understated style from M's alienated perspective, is essentially a slice of M's humdrum daily existence: in the rundown trailer park where he lives an orderly life observing the ordinary, everyday comings and goings, and goings-on, in the adjacent trailers, repairing cars in his spare time; and in the Grub's Rib diner where he works as a line chef. What primarily made this novel so enjoyable for this reader - where there's no real story as such, no real incident or surface activity to speak of and little character development - is Sherrill's excellence in evoking the atmosphere of ordinary everyday life in both M's domestic and working habitats, the trailer park and the diner.

An accomplished cook, skilled in car maintenance, M finds greater difficulty interacting with people. Slow-witted and clumsy with his sharp horns, thick-tongued and inarticulate, socially awkward, emotional turmoil burning within, M deperately seeks an outlet for his human needs, a longing for love in a world that seems to barely tolerate "outsiders" like himself, try as he may to leave his bloodthirsty past behind him. If there is a plot, it revolves around M's awakening feelings for Kelly, the epileptic waitress at the Grub's Rib diner but the novel is more about what it means to be human, what it means to be lonely, what it means to be on the outside. Recommended!

An exceptional first novel
A sweet, melancholy book in which the Minotaur, now some 5,000 years old, is working as a line chef in a steak place in some unnamed southern state. Now known only as ÔM,Õ his days are filled by a daily routine that Sherrill somehow manages to infuse with an overwhelming sense of longing. Once a savage, terrifying force, the Minotaur now spends his days repairing automobiles, his nights carving prime rib. M stands on the outside looking in, both attracted and terrified by the prospects of friendship and love. In clean, uncluttered prose, Sherrill lets us see the loneliness and longing of his character in sharp relief. It is remarkable that such an understated book should be so affecting.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this novel is that Sherrill is able to take such a strange premise and to turn it into something genuinely moving; to make us feel as if there is something important at stake in the MinotaurÕs search for love; that his fate will tell us something important about ourselves, about our own hopes and longings.

Enjoyable on more than one level.
The bits and pieces of mythology in this novel are interesting. They make the book what it is, but the story can exist without them. Because the story at heart is not about the Labyrinth and devouring virgins: it's about the Minotaur and his humanity. A guy is more than his job, more than his trailer, more than his appearance, more than what anybody sees. This is a story about difference and desperation. Sherrill is a storyteller: his characters are true and tangible. Sherrill is a poet: he works words like clay, makes them do just what he needs them to do. I liked this book a lot. I'm just an average college student and I don't have time to read a lot for pleasure, but this was one I'm glad I made time for.