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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HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

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An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
TOM'S CROSSING
by Mark Z. Danielewski

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LITTLE BLUE KITE
by Mark Z. Danielewski

- BOOK REVIEW
HADES
by Mark Z. Danielewski

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ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

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A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.