THE MINOTAUR TAKES HIS OWN SWEET TIME

Name: THE MINOTAUR TAKES HIS OWN SWEET TIME
Author: Steven Sherrill
ISBN: 9780895876737

by Steven Sherrill ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2016

While its pacing can be an acquired taste, this novel’s juxtaposition of magical realism and the mundane allows for a number...

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In Sherrill's follow-up to The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (2000), a creature from Greek mythology interacts with a group of eccentric characters in central Pennsylvania.

The clash between monstrous figures from antiquity and the quirks and foibles of the modern world are the stuff from which a host of plots can be mined, from the horrific to the elegiac. As the title of this novel indicates, Sherrill's tone is more matter-of-fact. Here, the Minotaur finds himself adrift in Pennsylvania, taking part in Civil War re-enactments, pondering his half-human, half-bull nature, and conversing with the residents and owners of the motel where he lives. “Converses” might be pushing it: the Minotaur is a protagonist of few words, bull’s head and all, and there’s a memorable disparity between his philosophical musings on everyday life and immortality and the brief and sometimes-nonverbal utterances that he makes throughout the book. There are plenty of quietly mundane and grotesque details: one character blowing his nose without the use of a tissue, for instance. Sherrill notes at one point that “the bull-man was conceived in and born out of the god-awful,” and that sense of an undercurrent of unpleasantness manifests itself most when he befriends a pair of troubled siblings. Slowly, the simulated violence in which he periodically engages gives way to the threat of something more chaotic. The pacing here is relatively languorous and borders on the episodic, but the book's quirks largely add up to an affecting and unpredictable whole.

While its pacing can be an acquired taste, this novel’s juxtaposition of magical realism and the mundane allows for a number of haunting and contemplative moments.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016

ISBN: 9780895876737

Page Count: 288

Publisher: John F. Blair

Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LOCKTENDER’S HOUSE
by Steven Sherrill

- BOOK REVIEW
VISITS FROM THE DROWNED GIRL
by Steven Sherrill

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.