ferris_mx's review against another edition
4.0
A compelling view into the interior life of a deeply disturbed human. Her perceptions are not typical, and she's doing her best but it's not socially acceptable and she kind of knows it, but kind of not.
mylangibson's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
vwojtowicz's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
leahgray's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
weneedtotalkaboutbooks's review against another edition
4.0
Sorry to disrupt the peace is a highly literary novel, with some darkly hilarious moments, that reflects on grief and mental health.
Helen, the first-person narrator, is a 30 something korean woman, adopted when she was a kid by a highly religious white american couple. Helen is confused about her sexuality and place in the world, but strongly opinionated. When she receives a phone call from an uncle informing her that her adoptive brother has taken his own life, Helen decides to drive back to her hometown to support her adoptive parents (but mainly to find some sort of personal validation) and to find out more about what brought her brother to take his own life.
This is a story densely written from the POV of an unlikable, unforgiving and mentally unstable main character. We are following her stream of thoughts, sometimes spiralling in daydreaming, flashbacks and reflections on life and human behaviour.
(A personal pet peeve is the absence of quotation marks in dialogues, but that’s a very personal point. I find it visually less tiring and more engaging when the author decides to keep the quotation marks, which isn’t the case in this novel)
In conclusion, Sorry to disrupt the peace seems to be polarising between readers. I am somewhere in the middle, closer to the 4/5 rating… I might need to reflect on it for a few days before making a final decision.
Some people compared it to Eileen by Moshfegh, which I personally don’t see, but I understand that the link is the unlikable narrator with strong ideas about the world and others. If you like how this sounds, and are looking for a deeply reflective, sometimes moving and often darkly funny novel, I’d suggest you to read the first pages of this book.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
obviouschild96's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
textpublishing's review against another edition
5.0
‘[Cottrell’s] voice is unflinching, unforgettable, and animated with a restless sense of humor.’
Catherine Lacey, author of Nobody Is Ever Missing
‘This book is not a diversion—it’s a lifeline.’
Jesse Ball, author of How to Set a Fire and Why
‘Intelligent and mysterious and funny, Patty Yumi Cottrell’s Sorry to Disrupt the Peace moves so mesmerizingly towards its blazingly good ending. One is tempted to read it as quickly as possible. But really, it is a book that should be read slowly, as some of its deepest pleasures lie in the careful observations, the witty prose, and just the book’s really wonderful gaze on city life, and actually, on all life. This is a stunning debut.’
Rebecca Lee, author of Bobcat
‘A sort of Korean-American noir, lean and wry and darkly compelling, I respectfully suggest you read her now.’
Ed Park, author of Personal Days
‘Patty Yumi Cottrell’s prose does so many of my favorite things–some too subtle to talk about without spoiling, but one thing I have to mention is the way in which her heroine’s investigation of a suicide draws the reader right into the heart of this wonderfully spiky hedgehog of a book and then elbows us yet further along into what is ultimately a tremendously moving act of imagination.’
Helen Oyeyemi, author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
‘Sorry to Disrupt the Peace had me opening my mouth to laugh only to feel sobs come tumbling out. It’s absurd, feeling so much at once, but it’s a distinctly human absurdity that Patty Yumi Cottrell has masterfully created in this book. In the end I felt ebullient and spent, grateful to be reminded that life is only funny and gorgeous because life is also strange and sad.’
Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls
‘Grief takes an unnerving path through a singular mind in Sorry to Disrupt the Peace. Beckett fans will find a familiar, but Patty Yumi Cottrell’s voice is her very own.’
Amelia Gray, author of Gutshot: Stories
‘Behind every suicide, there is a door.’ So says Helen, aka Sister Reliability, aka ‘spinster from a book,’ who is determined to open the door behind her adoptive brother’s recent death. Her search takes her from a studio apartment in NYC to a childhood home in Milwaukee, and yet the investigation is as philosophical as it is practical, as was, perhaps, the death itself. Patty Yumi Cottrell’s Sorry to Disrupt the Peace is a beguiling debut: absurdly funny, surprisingly beautiful, and ultimately sad as fuck.’
Danielle Dutton, author of Margaret the First
‘Cottrell gives Helen the impossible task of understanding what would drive another person to suicide, and the result is complex and mysterious, yet, in the end, deeply human and empathetic.’
Publishers Weekly
‘A bleakly funny comic tour de force that’s by turns poignant, uproariously funny, and viscerally unsettling.’
My Cup and Chaucer
‘Poignant, unsettling and funny.’
AU Review
‘A singular voice.’
Publishers Weekly
‘Patty Yumi Cottrell’s remarkable debut Sorry to Disrupt the Peace possesses something of the deadpan strangeness of Jane Bowles’s Two Serious Ladies, yet the book is electrifying in its freshness…The result is a sort of existential detective hunt—equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.’
Guardian
‘Cottrell's Sorry to Disrupt the Peace is animated by the humour, heart and sheer doggedness of Helen's narrative voice. She's a wonderfully layered and conflicted character—brilliant but unhinged, erratic but deeply empathetic—and the author brings her to life in a way that is as vivid and fully imagined as it is entertaining.’
Age
‘Cottrell opens the door into an alternative kind of existence, and to characters who may not usually be foregrounded. An addictive and darkly entertaining new writer.’
Overland
‘Sorry to Disrupt the Peace is a book without the grace and consolation sought and sometimes found in the literature of the bereaved. In their place, the disquieting, ungainly and unresolved are pushed to the fore, with often haunting results…Some novels thrive on plot and others on voice, and this one is all voice: a totalising, inescapable concoction of lurching, woozy, abrasive glory…It’s a tough read at times, but a necessary one.’
Australian
Catherine Lacey, author of Nobody Is Ever Missing
‘This book is not a diversion—it’s a lifeline.’
Jesse Ball, author of How to Set a Fire and Why
‘Intelligent and mysterious and funny, Patty Yumi Cottrell’s Sorry to Disrupt the Peace moves so mesmerizingly towards its blazingly good ending. One is tempted to read it as quickly as possible. But really, it is a book that should be read slowly, as some of its deepest pleasures lie in the careful observations, the witty prose, and just the book’s really wonderful gaze on city life, and actually, on all life. This is a stunning debut.’
Rebecca Lee, author of Bobcat
‘A sort of Korean-American noir, lean and wry and darkly compelling, I respectfully suggest you read her now.’
Ed Park, author of Personal Days
‘Patty Yumi Cottrell’s prose does so many of my favorite things–some too subtle to talk about without spoiling, but one thing I have to mention is the way in which her heroine’s investigation of a suicide draws the reader right into the heart of this wonderfully spiky hedgehog of a book and then elbows us yet further along into what is ultimately a tremendously moving act of imagination.’
Helen Oyeyemi, author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
‘Sorry to Disrupt the Peace had me opening my mouth to laugh only to feel sobs come tumbling out. It’s absurd, feeling so much at once, but it’s a distinctly human absurdity that Patty Yumi Cottrell has masterfully created in this book. In the end I felt ebullient and spent, grateful to be reminded that life is only funny and gorgeous because life is also strange and sad.’
Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls
‘Grief takes an unnerving path through a singular mind in Sorry to Disrupt the Peace. Beckett fans will find a familiar, but Patty Yumi Cottrell’s voice is her very own.’
Amelia Gray, author of Gutshot: Stories
‘Behind every suicide, there is a door.’ So says Helen, aka Sister Reliability, aka ‘spinster from a book,’ who is determined to open the door behind her adoptive brother’s recent death. Her search takes her from a studio apartment in NYC to a childhood home in Milwaukee, and yet the investigation is as philosophical as it is practical, as was, perhaps, the death itself. Patty Yumi Cottrell’s Sorry to Disrupt the Peace is a beguiling debut: absurdly funny, surprisingly beautiful, and ultimately sad as fuck.’
Danielle Dutton, author of Margaret the First
‘Cottrell gives Helen the impossible task of understanding what would drive another person to suicide, and the result is complex and mysterious, yet, in the end, deeply human and empathetic.’
Publishers Weekly
‘A bleakly funny comic tour de force that’s by turns poignant, uproariously funny, and viscerally unsettling.’
My Cup and Chaucer
‘Poignant, unsettling and funny.’
AU Review
‘A singular voice.’
Publishers Weekly
‘Patty Yumi Cottrell’s remarkable debut Sorry to Disrupt the Peace possesses something of the deadpan strangeness of Jane Bowles’s Two Serious Ladies, yet the book is electrifying in its freshness…The result is a sort of existential detective hunt—equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.’
Guardian
‘Cottrell's Sorry to Disrupt the Peace is animated by the humour, heart and sheer doggedness of Helen's narrative voice. She's a wonderfully layered and conflicted character—brilliant but unhinged, erratic but deeply empathetic—and the author brings her to life in a way that is as vivid and fully imagined as it is entertaining.’
Age
‘Cottrell opens the door into an alternative kind of existence, and to characters who may not usually be foregrounded. An addictive and darkly entertaining new writer.’
Overland
‘Sorry to Disrupt the Peace is a book without the grace and consolation sought and sometimes found in the literature of the bereaved. In their place, the disquieting, ungainly and unresolved are pushed to the fore, with often haunting results…Some novels thrive on plot and others on voice, and this one is all voice: a totalising, inescapable concoction of lurching, woozy, abrasive glory…It’s a tough read at times, but a necessary one.’
Australian
jeezjane's review against another edition
3.0
A fast read; writing is good but subject and protagonist's POV is distressing and uncomfortable. The protagonist's disordered thoughts, her gap with reality, and her desire to be a good person all mix together into you feeling pitiful and frustrated. Some parts are absurd and funny and tragic al together. The end makes up for a lot, and the cause of her brother's death is interesting/deserves reflection, but ultimately I didn't feel satisfied by either the protagonist's journey, nor the resolution to her brother's death. If you would like to read something stylistically atypical, with an interesting main character, but ultimately doesn't require too much committment from you, this would not be a bad one to try.
lola425's review against another edition
3.0
Oh, Helen. I don't particularly like you, I don't understand you, but I wish the best for you. The problem is I don't know what the best means for you. Which leaves me confused about this book. What happens for Helen? Does she just go on her quirky way, making few if any connections, and is that enough? Or does she go the way of her brother which is "the most generous thing" someone can sometimes do?
nikkinmichaels's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5