“Engaging and humorous, Wu offers a personal and wry reading…Wu has a natural rhythm and flow to her reading…[and] brings sensitivity and intelligence to this portrait of an elusive and eccentric woman.” AudioFile
Description
Helen Moran is thirty-two years old, single, childless, college educated, and partially employed as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She is accepting a furniture delivery in her shared studio apartment when her uncle calls to break the news: Helen’s adoptive brother is dead.
According to the Internet, there are six possible reasons why her brother might have killed himself. But Helen knows better: she knows that six reasons is only shorthand for “the abyss.” Helen also knows that she alone is qualified to launch a serious investigation into his death, so she purchases a one-way ticket to Milwaukee. There, as she searches her childhood home and attempts to uncover why someone would choose to die, she will face her estranged family, her brother’s few friends, and the overzealous grief counselor, Chad Lambo; she may also discover what it truly means to be alive.
A bleakly comic tour de force that’s by turns poignant, uproariously funny, and viscerally unsettling, this debut novel has shades of Bernhard, Beckett, and Bowles—and it announces the singular voice of Patrick Cottrell.
Praise
“Engaging and humorous, Wu offers a personal and wry reading…Wu has a natural rhythm and flow to her reading…[and] brings sensitivity and intelligence to this portrait of an elusive and eccentric woman.” AudioFile
“The powerful tale of a complex character confronting psychological demons, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace is a riveting experience, masterfully performed by theater, television, and film actress Nancy Wu.” Midwest Book Review
“Stellar…Complex and mysterious, yet, in the end, deeply human and empathetic.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Helen’s foggy view of reality is a dark, dark comedic well, and debut novelist Cottrell tells [the] story with gutsy style, glowing sentences, and true feeling.” Booklist
“Cottrell’s prose…draws the reader right into the heart of this wonderfully spiky hedgehog of a book…[and] what is ultimately a tremendously moving act of imagination.” Helen Oyeyemi, author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
Details
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| Release Day | Mar 13, 2017 |
| Release Date | March 14, 2017 |
| Release Date Machine | 1489449600 |
| Imprint | Blackstone Publishing |
| Provider | Blackstone Publishing |
| Categories | Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Literary Fiction, Fiction - All, Fiction - Adult |
Author Bio
Patrick Cottrell’s work has appeared in BOMB, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other places. He lives in Los Angeles.
Narrator Bio
Nancy Wu has narrated audiobooks since 2004, winning three AudioFile Earphones Awards. A New York theater, television, and film actor, she has recorded in studios all over the world—from Italy to Switzerland to Thailand. Her credits include Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Hope & Faith, All My Children, Made for Each Other, and the Oscar-nominated film Frozen River.
Overview
Helen Moran is thirty-two years old, single, childless, college educated, and partially employed as a guardian of troubled young people in New York. She is accepting a furniture delivery in her shared studio apartment when her uncle calls to break the news: Helen’s adoptive brother is dead.
According to the Internet, there are six possible reasons why her brother might have killed himself. But Helen knows better: she knows that six reasons is only shorthand for “the abyss.” Helen also knows that she alone is qualified to launch a serious investigation into his death, so she purchases a one-way ticket to Milwaukee. There, as she searches her childhood home and attempts to uncover why someone would choose to die, she will face her estranged family, her brother’s few friends, and the overzealous grief counselor, Chad Lambo; she may also discover what it truly means to be alive.
A bleakly comic tour de force that’s by turns poignant, uproariously funny, and viscerally unsettling, this debut novel has shades of Bernhard, Beckett, and Bowles—and it announces the singular voice of Patrick Cottrell.
Reviews
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