The Sleeping Car Porter
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY TOP 20 LITERARY FICTION BOOKS OF 2022
OPRAH DAILY: BOOKS TO READ BY THE FIRE?
When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair.
Baxter's name isn't George. But it's 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he'll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with "George."
On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two queer men, Baxter's memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can't part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mayr's dazzling latest (after Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall) tells the story of Baxter, a queer Black train porter, during a trip from Montreal to Vancouver in 1929. While Baxter grinds through endless tasks to keep the passengers happy and comfortable, he endures insufficient meals, sleep deprivation, repressed sexual desires, and the ever-present threat of receiving his 60th demerit, after which a porter is fired. On this particular journey, there are also singular guests to deal with: a romance writer and her adult daughter, a medium who believes her compartment is haunted, a recently orphaned little girl, a spry doctor, and a recluse with a possible stowaway in his cabin. It will all be worth it, however, if Baxter's work as a porter allows him to save enough money to go to dentistry school. Mayr's prose is vivid but never overwrought, capturing the surrealism of intense fatigue in constant motion: "He sits on the hopper again, his only escape, staring into the dark hole between his legs as rail ties blur by in the dark. He misses standing still." Readers will be captivated.
