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Shop nowSorry to Disrupt the Peace
Narrator
Nancy Wu
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Length
6 hours 19 minutes
Language
English
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.
Patrick Cottrell’s work has appeared in BOMB, Gulf Coast, and Black Warrior Review, among other places. He lives in Los Angeles.
Nancy Wu has done voice-over animation and narrated audiobooks since 2004. A New York theater, TV, and film actor, she has won multiple Library Journal and AudioFile Earphones Awards, and recorded in studios all over the world-from Italy to Switzerland to Thailand. Narrating across genres, she is known for varied character voices and bringing stories vividly to life. Born and raised in West Virginia, she now makes her home in Boulder, Colorado, as an avid yoga practitioner and rock climber. Her television/film credits include the Law & Order franchise, All My Children, the Oscar-nominated film Frozen River, and the Nickelodeon series Three Delivery. She studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City and holds a master's degree in human rights.
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Reviews
“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.”
“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.”
“Stellar…Complex and mysterious, yet, in the end, deeply human and empathetic.”
“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.”
“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.”
“In this completely absorbing novel of devastation and estrangement…[Cottrell’s] voice is unflinching, unforgettable, and animated with a restless sense of humor.”
“Sorry to Disrupt the Peace had me [feeling]…ebullient and spent, grateful to be reminded that life is only funny and gorgeous because life is also strange and sad.”
“Cottrell’s adoption of the rambling and specific absurd…[is] 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.”
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