The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break
By Steven Sherrill
(Picador, Paperback, 9780312308926, 320pp.)
Publication Date: November 2002
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover (May 2000)
Categories: General
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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.
Steven Sherrill is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The recipient of a Lila Wallace/ Reader’s Digest Fellowship, his poems and stories have appeared in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, and Georgia Review. He lives in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
“[A] brilliant imagination...Every page is a delight worth savoring for a millennium or two.” —USA Today
“One of the most original and oddly moving novels in some time...funny, touching, haunting...If you don’t fall under the spell of Sherrill’s Minotaur, so human in his needs and longings, you probably should be tossed in the labyrinth yourself.” —The Charlotte Observer
“Darkly intelligent and sometimes dazzling. The Minotaur is a complex and sympathetic creation, conspicuous yet socially invisible. What’s more, he’s here to stay.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“[A] comic, bittersweet first novel...Sherrill reveals himself as that most endangered of literary species, a crafty, talented novelist who’s not afraid to show his heart.”—Chicago Tribune
“[Sherrill] can make images luminesce with the reflected light of language.” —San Diego Union-Tribune
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