Steven Sherrill
History (mythology, anyway) tells us that Theseus killed the Minotaur. But what if the Minotaur took a fall and lived on? And on and on, until he found himself cooking in a restaurant in the rural South, circa 1990? This is the question that Steven Sherrill answers, Bradbury-like, in “The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break”.
The Minotaur drives a Vega, fixes cars (the horns do get in the way), and lives in a trailer park. He can talk, but it’s hard for him to make the words come out right, so he grunts a lot. He’s a good worker, with a few centuries of experience as a cook. His neighbors and coworkers like him. But he’s lonely. And then he falls in love.
Weird, yes, but the book is charming too. Everything but the main character is completely normal. If he were a man, it’d still be a good book about a cook and his troubles. Sherrill could have written it about a mute, or a mildly retarded man, and it would have been much the same story. But then I would never have noticed it on the shelf, and I wouldn’t have the picture in my head of a man with a bull’s head carving roast in a Southern supper club.