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. Her narrator is 32-year-old Helen – otherwise known as Sister Reliability, a name she claims she’s earned in the course of her work with “troubled young people”. Do we trust her? Hell, no! But this is just one of the many delights of the novel, which takes its title from Helen’s stock apology: “It could mean, I’m sorry, I made a mistake. It could mean, I’m sorry, I’ll ruin you, bitch.” This is Helen in a nutshell: she’s unhinged one moment, then astutely observant or empathetic the next. Having returned to her childhood home in Milwaukee, she sets about investigating her adopted brother’s unexpected suicide. The result is a sort of existential detective hunt – equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.
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