The Sleeping Car Porter

The Sleeping Car Porter

FEATURED ON MICHELLE OBAMA'S INSTAGRAM SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD WINNER OF THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE WINNER OF THE CITY OF CALGARY W.O. MITCHELL BOOK PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2023 GEORGES BUGNET AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE 2023 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD FOR ENGLISH-LANGUAGE FICTION PUBLISHERS WEEKLY TOP 20 LITERARY FICTION BOOKS OF 2022 OPRAH DAILY: BOOKS TO READ BY THE FIRE THE GLOBE 100: THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 CBC BOOKS: THE BEST CANADIAN FICTION OF 2022 SHORTLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 REPUBLIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRIZE When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you’ll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment. 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. "Suzette Mayr’s  The Sleeping Car Porter  offers a richly detailed account of a particular occupation and time—train porter on a Canadian passenger train in 1929—and unforcedly allows it to illuminate the societal strictures imposed on black men at the time—and today. Baxter is a secretly-queer and sleep-deprived porter saving up for dental school, working a system that periodically assigns unexplained demerits, and once a certain threshold is reached, the porter loses his job. Thus, success is impossible, the best one can do is to fail slowly. As Baxter takes a cross-continental run, the boarding passengers have more secrets than an Agatha Christie cast, creating a powder keg on train tracks.  The Sleeping Car Porter  is an engaging and illuminating novel about the costs of work, service, and secrets." – Keith Mosman, Powell's Books "I thought  The Sleeping Car Porter  was fantastic! It strikes a balance between being about the struggles of being black and gay at that time while not being too heavy handed with it. I enjoyed his constant mental math on how many demerits he might receive for each infraction. The reader really gets a sense of the conflict that Baxter is going through. I really liked reading a book from the perspective of a porter." – Hunter Gillum, Beaverdale Books "Sometimes, you come across a novel so perfect that you are confident that whomever you gift it to will love it." – Anton Hur, author of Toward Eternity: Roman “Mayr’s prose is vivid but never overwrought, capturing the surrealism of intense fatigue in constant motion … Readers will be captivated.” – Publishers Weekly , starred review “You can almost taste the exhaustion and despair in this quiet, yet vivid, story of a black man working as a porter on a sleeper train in Canada in 1929. Beautifully written, melancholy but never without hope.”  – Ingunn Sneadel, 2024 Dublin Literary Award Judge "Illuminating the ways in which race, class, and queerness intersect, this book will feel deeply relatable to anyone who has ever had to suffer the indignities of working front-line customer service."  – Rose Sutherland,  LitHub "In 1929, being a passenger train porter was fraught with challenges...Baxter’s own sleep deprivation is perhaps the most intriguing character of the book. It leads to hallucinations, questionable decisions, and borderline supernatural suggestions." – Kirkus Reviews "Suzette Mayr’s novel  The Sleeping Car Porter  an artfully constructed story that moves, beguiles, and satisfies." – Brett Josef Grubisic,  The Toronto Star "Suzette Mayr brings to life –believably, achingly, thrillingly –a whole world contained in a passenger train moving across the Canadian vastness, nearly one hundred years ago. As only occurs in the finest historical novels, every page in  The Sleeping Car Porter  feels alive and immediate –and eerily contemporary. The sleeping car porter in this sleek, stylish novel is named R.T. Baxter –called  George  by the people upon whom he waits, as is every other Black porter. Baxter’s dr