Sorry to Disrupt the Peace - Rilegato

A Spring 2017 B&N Discover Great New Writers Selection

"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

"In this completely absorbing novel of devastation and estrangement, Patty Yumi Cottrell introduces herself as a modern Robert Walser. Her voice is unflinching, unforgettable, and animated with a restless sense of humor." Catherine Lacey, author of Nobody Is Ever Missing

"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

"Patty Yumi Cottrell's adoption of the rambling and specific absurd will and must delight. This is a graceful claim not just about writing but about a way of being in the world, an always new and necessary way to contend with this garbage that surrounds us, these false portraits of our hearts and minds. This book is not a diversion--it's a lifeline." Jesse Ball, author of How to Set a Fire and Why

"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

"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

" 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

"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

"Disturbing and hilarious, Cottrell's haunting debut explores the toxic fumes that radiate from the narrator's dysfunctional familial network, arresting development, truncating lives, and dragging everything into a vertiginous chasm the narrator, Helen Moran, investigates. Cottrell seduces her readers into an uncanny abyss." Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, author of Fra Keeler

Patty Yumi Cottrell's work has appeared in BOMB, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other places. She lives in Los Angeles.