The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill

 This is a curiously beautiful, gently moving tale of the Minotaur. Separated from his roots by 5,000 years and now, and only recently, griddle chef at a small town diner in the States, the Minotaur is a shrunken shadow of his former self. No longer the hero (as in half human, half god) but a painfully shy and introverted human being, given to bouts of melancholy and sorrow as he remembers what once was with the peace of distance and the shame of having been someone he now fears and despises. How many of us look at our younger selves and wish it wasn't so...?

Sherrill has crafted something wonderful here. Never losing touch with the sense of the bovine in the Minotaur, the sense of discomfort with being human but struck with the longings and desires of a herd animal. Sherrill's whole book, the prose and its structure gently resonate with the lowing of a ruminant struggling with human feelings.

The Minotaur lives in the present and if he's compassionate it's accidental as much as it's his heart moving for another. Whilst there is a sense of him growing in this book, one can't help but be gripped by the loss of who he once was in his very growth and it all plays against the background of his immortality and the unchanging nature that bestows upon him.

Yet so many of the problems facing him are those we deal with every day. Loneliness, belonging, connection and knowing when to act. In the end the misfits and acquaintances he finds himself amongst show their true colours and the Minotaur shows us as much about who we are as he continues to remain timeless and diminished himself.

I'm struggling to convey the gentle sense of love with which he is written and so I can only say - if you find a copy of this book...join him on his break and see what you can see.