The Sleeping Car Porter

Set on a 1929 train, this historical novel follows Baxter, a Black queer sleeping-car porter, as he faces abusive white passengers, unsettling ghostly presences, and a secret love. It captures the harsh realities of rail labor and the pain of being treated as invisible, while balancing quiet humor with mounting tension.

racismrail laborqueer desirehistorical fictionmemory and self-preservation

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Work Information

As the train rattles on, the hopes and fears of a man forced into invisibility quietly expand.

Told from the perspective of Baxter, a Black queer sleeping-car porter, this novel portrays the North American railroad world of 1929. Harsh labor, class and racial power dynamics, and a hidden love affair create an air of pressure and confinement, while ghostly details and sharp dialogue give the book its singular depth.

Review Summaries

The novel is praised for the immediacy created by its attention to labor and its restrained emotional tone. Readers respond strongly to a protagonist denied belonging on both racial and sexual grounds, and to the way the book carries both weight and delicate humor.

Book Information

Publisher: Coach House Books
Published: 2022-09-27
Pages: 224 pages
Language: 英語
Size: 13.34 x 1.91 x 20.96 cm
ISBN-13: 9781552454589
ISBN-10: 1552454584
Price: 3848 JPY
Category: 洋書/Gay & Lesbian/Literature & Fiction/Fiction/Gay

FEATURED ON MICHELLE OBAMA'S INSTAGRAM SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD WINNER OF THE 2022 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

Suzette Mayr is the author of six novels including her most recent, The Sleeping Car Porter , winner of the 2022 Giller Prize, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. The novel was also shortlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, and the Republic of Consciousness Prize (US and Canada). Mayr’s other novels have won the ReLit Award and City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, and been nominated for the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book in the Canada-Caribbean Region, the Writers' Guild of Alberta's Best First Book and Best Novel Awards, and the Ferro- Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction. Mayr has done interdisciplinary work with Calgary theatre company Theatre Junction, and visual artists Lisa Brawn and Geoff Hunter. She has also published articles in journals such as Horror Studies , Studies in Canadian Literature , and The Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature . She is a former President of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta. Mayr teaches Creative Writing at the University of Calgary, and is a Killam Laureate.

Reviews

A wonderful little book!

A wonderful little book and Suzette Mayer is a good storyteller. I am pleased that this book has already been translated into many languages, such as Spanish and German.
Zuviel gewollt

Baxter - auf Grund seiner Vorliebe für ScienceFiction-Magazine 'Marsianer' genannt - arbeitet als Schlafwagenschaffner in den USA - und etwas Kanada - in den späten 20er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts. Der Afro-Amerikaner hat sich dafür entschieden um mit dem Gehalt und den Trinkgeldern $ 1.100 zusammen zu bekommen um damit eine Ausbildung zum Zahnarzt zu finanzieren. Dabei fährt er teils 80-Stundenschichten, unterbrochen von oft nur minutenlangen Schlafphasen, denn er muss den Passagieren immer zur Verfügung stehen, nebenher noch ihre rausgestellten Schuhe und Stiefel putzen, Schläfer/innen in den oberen Kojen Leitern anstellen, wenn diese zur Toilette müssen, beim Aus- und Einsteigen helfen, mit einem kleinen Stufenhocker, den er verwaltet und gelegentlich sexuelle Avanchen abwehren. Die ihn eh irritieren, da er mehr auf Männer steht - 1929 echt lebensgefährlich. Außerdem kann jede Beschwerde zum Rauswurf führen. Der Einblick in sein Leben und seine Arbeit ist ganz interessant und würde den Roman gut füllen. Die zusätzliche Komplikation durch Baxters sexuelle Orientierung ist sicherlich nicht unrealistisch, aber da ich dieses Werk angefangen habe zu lesen in Hinblick auf eine unterrichtliche Verwendung, muss ich sagen, ist das neben den ganzen anderen Themen 'Arbeitsrecht', 'Gewerkschaften', 'Rassismus', 'Ausbeutung' und 'Eisenbahnen an sich' doch eine Schüppe zuviel, weswegen ich das Buch, das mich auch sonst nur eingeschränkt fesselt bei etwa 30% beende.
loved it so much

this book is such great historical fiction. Literature for sure and great queer love. hope others can enjoy this journey through Canada & hallucinations!
Very good

I enjoyed this strange and story. Very much worth a read in a world awash with mediocre writing, this will entertain and satisfy
Giller prize winning book, well deserved.

This book was an unstoppable read. The story of night porters on the railway, on trips lasting several nights per leg was wonderfully written. Written from the perspective of the night porter, one gets drawn into his incredible fatigue and where his mind goes during this exhaustion. There is also a Social perspective involving homophobia. A great read.