FICTION

The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time

by Steven Sherrill
Blair. Sept. 2016. 288p. ISBN 9780895876737. $26. F
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It's been 16 years since the Minotaur took the cigarette break that made Sherrill something of a cult author, and now he's back, working as a Civil War reenactor in a Pennsylvania theme park. Having endured millennia as an outsider in the world of humans, M is less action figure than existential loner trying to get along, and Sherrill lets us feel his pain. M is affable enough as he slowly meanders from job to home, the motel where the immigrant Indian owners treat him kindly, and he is taunted some but mostly tolerated by his neighbors. The plot takes its own sweet time getting to the crux of the matter: the arrival of a tough young woman named Holly and her rascally brain-damaged brother, whose presence creates a crisis M will overcome.
VERDICT Brightly and incisively written, this is a well-rendered portrait of a stranger among us.
Reviewed by Barbara Hoffert , Nov 15, 2016
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