The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break: A Novel

By: Steven Sherrill

Narrated by: Holter Graham

Award-winning author, narrator, and screenwriter Neil Gaiman personally selected this book, and, using the tools of the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), cast the narrator and produced this work for his audiobook label, Neil Gaiman Presents.

A few words from Neil on The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break: "When Steve and I talked about the ideal voice for M, he suggested Holter Graham….because 'Holter’s handling of the Minotaur’s grunt was PERFECT. Exactly what I heard in my head.'"

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. "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." (Publishers Weekly) Steven Sherrill created the artwork used for the audiobook edition of The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break.

To hear more from Neil Gaiman on The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, click here, or listen to the introduction at the beginning of the book itself.

Learn more about Neil Gaiman Presents and Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX).

©2000 Steven Sherrill (P)2011 John F. Blair Publisher

Full of surprises, delightfully unexpected

I honestly can't remember the last time I was this surprised by such originality in storytelling. Bravo to Steven Sherrill for a tale that's both audaciously fanciful and very human (or half-human, I suppose). Delightful, bittersweet and utterly unexpected. I'm recommending this to my friends.
... Another outstanding performance by Holter Graham, one of the most listenable(?) readers in the world of audiobooks.
... Big thanks to Neil Gaiman for championing a fine work that might not have received the attention it deserves.
... And now I can't help but think about other legendary creatures from ancient literature. What are they up to these days?....

very good

I was very excited to see these selections by Neil Gaiman and this did not disappoint. The story was well written, rich with sensation and experiences, not all of them pleasant but the end of the book I felt completely satisfied. Sherill's writing made it easy for me to empathize with the Minotaur, and his character transcends the mythical beast and becomes very human and very familiar. Really glad I bought this book.

Thank you Neil Gaiman

Where does The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break: A Novel rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is a very well done production. I think this series was a wonderful idea.

Any additional comments?

So worthy of an audio version.

I need a cigarette

wow, this is an amazing work of fiction. I picked it up on sale, but something this good is hard to put a price on. suffice it to say it's worth it if you pay full price. The thing I've always loved about good fiction, is that there is more truth in it than any non-fiction book you're likely to come across, and yes that's taking into account the fact that the main character is a minotaur.

This story is set in the south in what feels like the eighties, and reminds me quite a bit poetry i've read by Joe Bolton. I often suffer from feeling alone, and it usually hits me worst in a room full of people I know and love. listening to this book I know i'm not alone in what I feel. inertia and chance have a lot to do with how our lives unfold, and this concept is brought beautifully to bear in the form of the minotaur. the actions of the beast don't always make good sense, but that's kind of the point, he's a minotaur after all.

the narrator Holter Graham was excellent as well, and really brought the characters and the prose to life. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another book that he has narrated, or that the author Steven Sherrill has written. in fact the last hour of the book, I couldn't pull myself away. I hate books with a crappy ending, but this one did not disappoint. I could go on and on, but really quit reading this and do yourself a favor, buy the book.

Slice of Immortal life

It's a great slice of life story. Sure the protagonist is the mythical Minotaur, but the everyday struggles hit home.

Excellent Narration, Beautiful Prose, Poor Story

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Nay~ not time well-spent. I have to admit that the only reason I continued listening was because I paid for it and because the narrator was FANTASTIC. I also want to give credit where its due: Sherrill's prose, overall writing style, and wordsmithing are well honed. At times I truly enjoyed his sentence structure and descriptions... BUT~ this story didn't go anywhere. After 4 hours and 49 minutes, I had to stop. It's a dull story overall. I really don't understand where all the praise comes from. This will be the first audiobook I was unable to finish. I even made it through Amanda Ronconi's nasal-y, whiny, exaggerated Alaskan accent in How to flirt with a Naked Werewolf (not my usual book, but it was part of a girl's bookclub).

I cannot speak for the back half of the book, but the front half of it is a sad, and dull story of a minotaur living in an old backwards town, living in a trailer, going to his job (cook in a local restaurant), fixing his car, having the desire to speak but not ever doing it, and overall letting life wash over him as he craves human interaction that he can't quite have. It's depressing at best... At first I thought the book would have many more mythological references with fun modern twists (it didn't), and then I thought: well maybe it's a study on human interaction and what we take for granted in our social rituals (that didn't seem to develop). The I thought... hmm, perhaps the author is using this is a criticism on how poorly we treat outcasts or some such (nay, the reprimand never came). Then finally I decided: the author just wants to tell a sad tale, about a lonely, boring individual, with no real aspirations, phantom hopes, and an unstable life and background that kept him (and will keep him) on the road to more eternal nothingness. That's when I came back to Audible to find my next book. Goodbye

Would you ever listen to anything by Steven Sherrill again?

I don't think I will...

What does Holter Graham bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

This narrator does an excellent job with what could be a very monotonous story. His voices and grunts and tone were the highlight of those 4+ hours.

Any additional comments?

I was disappointed in this book. I wanted to love it because Neil Gaiman recommended it. I gave it 3 starts overall because the narrator deserves credit (and the author forges a good paragraph even if the story is boring).

THE, THE, THE, THE, THE, THE MINOTAUR

If living 5000 years does this to your personality, then kill me at 80 please. THE Minotaur has lived 5000 years, yet he is inept and insecure in all things, except mechanical. Forget the title, he does not smoke. He does not drink, swim, talk or have fun. He is Anal.

The plot is, he works in a restaurant, lives in a trailer park, helps a guy move and that is it. I worked in a restaurant as a kid, you worked in a restaurant as a kid, 95% of the people who read this have worked in a restaurant. The descriptive, lengthy restaurant tripe might be interesting to rich academia types, but not the average reader. Even Koontz did not go to this length with his fry cook, Odd.

Through out the book he is consistently referred to as THE Minotaur. THE writer probably had some deep reason for not giving THE Minotaur a name. THE result for THE reader is that it is hard to empathize with THE Minotaur, since he as no name and in the English language we put THE in front of inanimate objects. His co-workers do call him M, he has no friends. Take THE Minotaur out of the book and you cut it in half. I wanted to give up on this book several times, but kept with it. Despite the lack of story, I did start to feel some empathy for the THE Minotaur toward the last part of the book. If my constant use of THE is irritating you then you do not want to listen to this book.

There are characters here from "My Name is Earl", but not well developed. The Minotaur is so un-minotaur like it is unbelievable. His hips and legs are as skinny as a girl. Even obese people have large legs and hips, from carry the load of there upper body. He has no balls. A bull with no balls. He is one sad bull and you will be sad if you expect too much from this.

I gave it three stars as the writer does show promise in his prose. He has an imagination, he just needs to think things through or maybe not think so much.

Even the monstrous among us...

The Minotaur in Steven Sherrill's novel is a being I can relate to. He has a hulking frame that tends to bump into things, is quiet and introspective, feels like a bit of an outsider in the ordinary human world, and doesn't always know the best way to verbalize his thoughts, so he often just says "mmmmm".

Unlike me, though, he's the very same creature from ancient myth. He's lived so long, his monstrous past has mostly worn away, leaving only a few dim memories. The same is true of his ability to provoke a reaction from the humans around him. To the denizens of the North Carolina trailer park where he now lives, or the greasy spoon restaurant where he works as a short order cook at, he's a slight oddity, but, really, no more so than the girl who suffers from epilepsy or the gay waiter who's also a Civil War reenactor. The Minotaur leads a fairly unremarkable life. He worries about losing his job, feels uncomfortable around dogs and electronics, likes to repair cars, and has trouble making long-term plans.

There's not much that "happens" in this novel, which has the feel of one those subdued indie films in which the characters carry out their normal lives in a way meant to show the profundity of everyday existence. Conventional urban fantasy, this is not. The writing is quite good at capturing the feel and character of the South, though, and I enjoyed the character study of the Minotaur, called "M" by others, who yearns for connection, or at least a place in the world, but doesn't know how to fit in. He becomes, variously, an observer of human nature, a sounding board for other people's feelings and worries, an object of antagonism, and a lover.

Of course, the story isn't really "about" the Minotaur, but about the way the primal permeates life, sometimes getting lost underneath it, sometimes boiling to the surface at odd moments. Add someone a little more primal than everyone else to small, backwater town, and the dynamic shifts subtly. I enjoyed the nuance with which Sherrill weaves in myth, religion, humor, absurdity, sexuality, the innocent directness of children, and human pathos (e.g. the death and subsequent "unburial" of Sweeney's dog).

Admittedly, this is a slow, languid cloudy day book (though everything comes together in a tense conclusion) and not everyone will enjoy it. I actually quit at several points to listen to other books, but found myself drawn back again. Some credit surely goes to audiobook narrator Holter Graham's excellent reading. He grasps the text well, gives different inflections to different characters, and injects the right notes into the Minotaur's many "hmmms" and "mmmms". He even does rather well with the "dialogue" from an overheard porn movie.

Another win from the Neil Gaiman Presents project, though this one more for tone and writing than storytelling.

The best story I have heard in a long time.

I have never taken the time to write a review before, but I enjoyed this story so much I felt compelled to spread the word. A compelling and entertaining story perfectly performed. I kept finding excuses to get in the car to hear more.

"The brevity of hearts in a labyrinth of days."

The one and only Minotaur is in North Carolina working as a cook in a popular restaurant called Grub's Rib. He cannot deny the "cannibalistic nature of his job," roasting and carving beef ribs: from the shoulders up he is a bull, complete with tough black skin, huge nose, giant tongue, full lips, and sharp horns. In his thousands of years of life--he is tepidly immortal--the Minotaur has been almost everywhere and seen almost everything, and his power, spirit, wildness, and, yes, malevolence, have been eroded by time and experience ("high, the costs of living"). Today his only ambition is to order his life around errands and work, keep a low profile, and belong, however tenuously, to the "team" of workers at Grub's Rib and to the community of tenants at Lucky U Mobile Estates, where he lives rent-free in return for fixing the used cars the owner sells there. No charismatic, bestial force of evil, the Minotaur is slow to anger and prone to worry, and is at core a voyeur who witnesses rather than influences events. He is not wholly useful in an emergency.

Steven Sherrill's The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (2000), then, is a slice of life from the Minotaur's millennia. He has a crush on an epileptic waitress; he must tolerate a pair of obnoxious young waiters; he is assigned a more public role at Grub's Rib; and although he deftly handles knives, tools, and the like and is a proficient and experienced cook, when distracted he is prone to accidents involving sharp instruments, hot oil, and unwieldy horns. The Minotaur senses a change coming, the kind that has in the past forced him to leave familiar places and roles to live and wander nomadically until he could find new ones.

The Minotaur is a compelling character. As the quintessential outsider, he is able to view humanity objectively and freshly without ever quite being able to fit in. His otherness is increased by his inarticulateness: words fall "mutilated" from his mouth, and he communicates mostly via grunts ("Unnnnnh"), letting the context convey his meaning. His status as Other means that people use him as a sounding board or a confessional with which to express their plans, problems, and experiences, led to believe by the Minotaur's grunts that he's listening carefully and agreeing or disagreeing according to their needs. There are times when his linguistic limitations are unfortunate. There are times when his lack of common sense is boggling.

One of the interesting features of Sherrill's novel is the way in which, after initial shock, disgust, or fear, people generally suffer the Minotaur as if he is "cloaked in a tenuous veil of complicated anonymity." Luckily, the important people in his life, like his boss, his landlord, and his fellow cooks are kind-hearted. Luckily, unlike what happens in The Man Who Fell to Earth, here no scientists try to imprison and study the Minotaur, who is, after all, indigenous to earth. Indeed, the Minotaur was created by the human psyche, he is at least half human, much of what he thinks or does or experiences "would be true even if he didn't have horns," and his blood "carries with it through his monster's veins the weighty, necessary, terrible stuff of human existence: fear, wonder, hope, wickedness, love." Sherrill, then, uses the Minotaur to imaginatively explore what it might feel like to be an immortal monster living a mundane life among mortal humans, thereby expressing what it might feel like to be any unusual human longing to fit in ("Even the monstrous among us need love").

Sherill's style is rich, literate, and varied. He writes occasional poetic chapters to depict the Minotaur's memories and dreams:
"For the meadow near Cnossus, where the hyacinth petals
turn and turn out like so many palms refusing applause.
Think of me, Pasiphae, in your moment of cramped ecstasy."

He writes the vivid minutiae of life, as, for instance when he depicts some wasps in the glove compartment of an old car in a junkyard: "Whether the dozen or so wasps clinging to the nest, wings tucked like hard coats over their pinstriped articulated bodies, somber as pall bearers, but for the nervous antennae, whether they protect this treasure or are oblivious of it, is hard to tell."

He writes pitch-perfect dialogue: "You ever stick anybody with one of them horns?"

He writes lots of humor, dry ("It was an unsettling show, but he had seen worse"), bawdy (putt-putt golf accompanied by the sound from the speakers of an adult drive-in theater), cultural ("The GI Joe doll, singed and shell shocked"), or philosophical ("The crow's shadow mimics its master"). He is especially good with boys, so creative, destructive, sweet, malicious, stupid, and entertaining.

The reader Holter Graham is perfect. His Minotaur grunt is great ("Unnnnh") and his white, black, and Hispanic male and female North Carolinian kids, teens, and adults all sound convincing and human. Graham makes nary a misstep--even when voicing porn actors in action.

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break is a quirky book. I'm not sure what it resembles. It is surely no heroic fantasy adventure or horror story! Neither does it feel like an urban fantasy of the Charles de Lint variety, because Sherrill uses the fantastic to show how human nature, relationships, and life are wonderful, terrible, bleak, and hopeful rather than to show how magic is just around the corner. Perhaps it most resembles Edward Scissorshands. If you don't expect a page-turning story featuring a quick-thinking, take-charge, "normal" hero, Sherrill's novel might make you chuckle, cringe, and sigh.