The Griffin or the Agate

If you wandered around to the back of your local restaurant and took a look into the kitchen, there'd be a few things you'd expect to see - sinks, stoves, pots, pans, cutlery, and so on. But how would you react to spotting a creature of mythology calmly making crepes?
     Such is the premise of The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Steven Sherrill. The titular monster is a long way from the Labyrinth, eking out a living as a line cook in a steakhouse down below the Mason-Dixon line. Despite his odd appearance the Minotaur is an accepted, if not embraced, part of the human world. He garners a few strange looks and is the butt of teasing from some of his dimwitted co-workers, but otherwise is permitted to go on with his life.
     Such as it is. No longer a virgin-eating, hero-slaying horror, the Minotaur is a socially stunted but desperately lonely being. He wants the things others have - happiness, companionship, maybe even love, but he's not sure how to get these things. He stumbles through his days, from one mistake and humiliation to another, until he sees the light at the end of the tunnel as a coworker named Kelly begins to show an interest in him. Can the half-man, half-bull manage to conduct a normal relationship? Or will he be taking another stride along his trail of pathos?
     Sherrill does a brilliant job in crafting a protagonist who is both touching and pitiful at the same time. The Minotaur could be replaced with any social misfit or object of derision, but by transforming the once mighty into the mundane Sheryl shows how easily fortunes can be reversed. The Minotaur has forgotten his old ways of violence and so suffers abuses he would not have in the past. He is incapable of doing the right thing when it comes to his few friends, but more often than not it's due to ignorance, not malice. In less skilled hands it would have been very difficult to portray the Minotaur in a favorable light, but Sherrill does a good job of pulling it off. His style of writing - blunt yet lyrical - fits well.
     This is a strange and unusual book, melding the sordidness of trailer park life with the uncertainty of a beleaguered, monosyllabic immortal facing the terrifying proposition of affection and love. But sometimes strange can be a good thing, and in this case it is.   §

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