"Sorry to Disrupt the Peace" Response
In a few short weeks, two dear friends are leaving their Berkeley apartment and moving on in search of new housing experiences. As if it wasn't taxing enough to have to find new lodging in the Bay Area, one of the friends, while cleaning out her room a week ago found what appeared to be the shell of a bed bug on her carpet.
She dismissed it at first. She thought maybe it wasn't a bed bug, but a beetle. Then its memory started to gnaw at her. She was freaked out and couldn't sleep. The nightmare continued the next day when she woke up with what appeared to be fresh-welted bites.
She called me distraught, and though I overcame it in order to comfort her, the words "bed bug" were enough to produce a ghostly itch on my own skin.
If just those words were enough to solicit a phantom itching on my arms and legs, then you can imagine that Patti Yumi Cottrell's, "Sorry to Disrupt the Peace," inspired a body full of creepy-crawly sensations. My experience of reading the book was filled with discomfort, stomach clenching, and teeth grinding. And when I think about how to describe the novel the main word that comes to mind is 'visceral.'
The story is narrated by Helen Moran, a young woman who travels to her childhood home in Milwaukee in the wake of her brother's suicide. However, the real narrator in this book seems to be Cottrell's highly evocative language that had me squirming through this reading from start to finish.
Motifs of death, vomiting, insects, and a magical realism cherry atop this morbid sundae in the form of a poltergeist European man named Jascque were enough to take me over the edge. At times, I was forced to put on some lighter fare in the background to remind me to rejoin the living.
However, despite my need to indulge these scardy cat tendencies during the reading of this book, I can admit that death is a fitting motif for this story of suicide. Morbid characterizations begin somewhat early on with the descriptions of Helen's adopted family's vast and drafty house, and extend to every corner of the story, from dripping sheet cake to buckets of bleach with dead flowers in them.
This book represents some of my first exposure to the "noir" novels and its macabre descriptions fit well with my expectations of the genre. Cottrell's language employing these dark themes draws the reader into the world she's creating. I could appreciate the skill she demonstrated in doing this. Still, for me, it was hard to get over how creepy it was that the main character's adopted parents' house seemed like something straight out of a horror film. Cottrell's subtly does this world-building with her word choices and imagery:
"The hallway floor was wood, a dilapidated wood with deep crevices that collected dirt and dead skin cells. I had to wear shoes to walk its length or my soles would turn black" (pg. 95)
Then there are the bugs, which sweep throughout the narrative like a hopped up version of the locusts from the ten plagues. Insects figure prominently in Cottrell's descriptive language. As Helen reflects, "I was shaking uncontrollably. Speak! I screamed to myself, speak! My tongue felt like an inchworm inside my mouth and I became estranged from it."
They also appear in small vignettes about Helen's time in New York. She tells a story about her roommate's old kitchen, "[they] opened up her kitchen countertop... only to discover that her entire kitchen counter, approximately fifty-five cubic feet, had been filled to the brim with live cockroaches enough to fill four black garbage bags full of hissing wings and shells that were tossed promptly to the curb." (pg. 74)
There is also a sub narrative around Helen's own experience with bed bugs, which Cottrell expertly includes in the form of a pamphlet that Helen writes to the troubled young people she supports in her work. "She only saw tiny black specks, their shit according to the internet. During the day, if she slid a credit card into one of the ripped seems of the mattress, the bedbugs would flow out in great numbers as if the mattress were stuffed with nothing but the brown-and-red leaf-shaped-bugs" (pg. 173).
With these and other touches, Cottrell takes her readers into the mind of her main character/narrator. Amidst all these insects and markers of death, we begin to feel Helen's paranoia, and don't know whether or not the descriptions we're reading are what's really happening or the creations of the narrator's psychosis.
Another example of this is the old European man that silently walks in and out of Helen's interactions with her adopted parents. At first, the man is described as the embodiment of her family's grief.
"I started to formulate a hypothesis that their grieving was the fourth, yet-un-spoken presence in the living room and no one had acknowledged it. Perhaps I was the only one, the chosen one, who could see it clearly in a material way. If it had to take on a bodily form, and if I had to describe that form to someone, I would say I imagined it looked like a European man in his forties, average build a height, balding, with a red nose."
At first, as readers, we don't find this to be totally ridiculous because we know that Helen is inventive and artistic. The narrator's descriptions are even funny sometimes in a dark way. But soon, the descriptions of the European man go from a figurative embodiment of emotion to an actual character who comes in and out of the scene. As a result, the reader, while being slowly convinced of the unreliability of narrator, is shifted toward the idea that Helen might actually be seeing the European man. I have always been a fan of magical realism, and enjoyed the comic relief of the European man in the otherwise relentless sadness of this story. So I was glad that the author was able to balance things out in this way.
Admittedly, this book was a tough read for me. It took me outside my comfort zone. However, in terms of studying it for its craft, I appreciated the chance to observe this author's world building abilities and how she was able to sew together this noir novel with a combination of sensory detail, and rhetorical devices.
As for my friends and their ordeal, I told my friend to forget about the bugs. "Let them become a distant memory. It's over now," I said. This advice is not totally divorced from what I'm telling myself to do about this book. I did learn something from my experience reading and writing about it, but I hope to let its narrative fade away like an uncomfortable memory.
She dismissed it at first. She thought maybe it wasn't a bed bug, but a beetle. Then its memory started to gnaw at her. She was freaked out and couldn't sleep. The nightmare continued the next day when she woke up with what appeared to be fresh-welted bites.
She called me distraught, and though I overcame it in order to comfort her, the words "bed bug" were enough to produce a ghostly itch on my own skin.
If just those words were enough to solicit a phantom itching on my arms and legs, then you can imagine that Patti Yumi Cottrell's, "Sorry to Disrupt the Peace," inspired a body full of creepy-crawly sensations. My experience of reading the book was filled with discomfort, stomach clenching, and teeth grinding. And when I think about how to describe the novel the main word that comes to mind is 'visceral.'
The story is narrated by Helen Moran, a young woman who travels to her childhood home in Milwaukee in the wake of her brother's suicide. However, the real narrator in this book seems to be Cottrell's highly evocative language that had me squirming through this reading from start to finish.
Motifs of death, vomiting, insects, and a magical realism cherry atop this morbid sundae in the form of a poltergeist European man named Jascque were enough to take me over the edge. At times, I was forced to put on some lighter fare in the background to remind me to rejoin the living.
However, despite my need to indulge these scardy cat tendencies during the reading of this book, I can admit that death is a fitting motif for this story of suicide. Morbid characterizations begin somewhat early on with the descriptions of Helen's adopted family's vast and drafty house, and extend to every corner of the story, from dripping sheet cake to buckets of bleach with dead flowers in them.
This book represents some of my first exposure to the "noir" novels and its macabre descriptions fit well with my expectations of the genre. Cottrell's language employing these dark themes draws the reader into the world she's creating. I could appreciate the skill she demonstrated in doing this. Still, for me, it was hard to get over how creepy it was that the main character's adopted parents' house seemed like something straight out of a horror film. Cottrell's subtly does this world-building with her word choices and imagery:
"The hallway floor was wood, a dilapidated wood with deep crevices that collected dirt and dead skin cells. I had to wear shoes to walk its length or my soles would turn black" (pg. 95)
Then there are the bugs, which sweep throughout the narrative like a hopped up version of the locusts from the ten plagues. Insects figure prominently in Cottrell's descriptive language. As Helen reflects, "I was shaking uncontrollably. Speak! I screamed to myself, speak! My tongue felt like an inchworm inside my mouth and I became estranged from it."
They also appear in small vignettes about Helen's time in New York. She tells a story about her roommate's old kitchen, "[they] opened up her kitchen countertop... only to discover that her entire kitchen counter, approximately fifty-five cubic feet, had been filled to the brim with live cockroaches enough to fill four black garbage bags full of hissing wings and shells that were tossed promptly to the curb." (pg. 74)
There is also a sub narrative around Helen's own experience with bed bugs, which Cottrell expertly includes in the form of a pamphlet that Helen writes to the troubled young people she supports in her work. "She only saw tiny black specks, their shit according to the internet. During the day, if she slid a credit card into one of the ripped seems of the mattress, the bedbugs would flow out in great numbers as if the mattress were stuffed with nothing but the brown-and-red leaf-shaped-bugs" (pg. 173).
With these and other touches, Cottrell takes her readers into the mind of her main character/narrator. Amidst all these insects and markers of death, we begin to feel Helen's paranoia, and don't know whether or not the descriptions we're reading are what's really happening or the creations of the narrator's psychosis.
Another example of this is the old European man that silently walks in and out of Helen's interactions with her adopted parents. At first, the man is described as the embodiment of her family's grief.
"I started to formulate a hypothesis that their grieving was the fourth, yet-un-spoken presence in the living room and no one had acknowledged it. Perhaps I was the only one, the chosen one, who could see it clearly in a material way. If it had to take on a bodily form, and if I had to describe that form to someone, I would say I imagined it looked like a European man in his forties, average build a height, balding, with a red nose."
At first, as readers, we don't find this to be totally ridiculous because we know that Helen is inventive and artistic. The narrator's descriptions are even funny sometimes in a dark way. But soon, the descriptions of the European man go from a figurative embodiment of emotion to an actual character who comes in and out of the scene. As a result, the reader, while being slowly convinced of the unreliability of narrator, is shifted toward the idea that Helen might actually be seeing the European man. I have always been a fan of magical realism, and enjoyed the comic relief of the European man in the otherwise relentless sadness of this story. So I was glad that the author was able to balance things out in this way.
Admittedly, this book was a tough read for me. It took me outside my comfort zone. However, in terms of studying it for its craft, I appreciated the chance to observe this author's world building abilities and how she was able to sew together this noir novel with a combination of sensory detail, and rhetorical devices.
As for my friends and their ordeal, I told my friend to forget about the bugs. "Let them become a distant memory. It's over now," I said. This advice is not totally divorced from what I'm telling myself to do about this book. I did learn something from my experience reading and writing about it, but I hope to let its narrative fade away like an uncomfortable memory.
The bugs, the bugs, they are certainly a motif in the book and certainly provide an ickiness in the environments, like the darknesses and the cheesy furniture. I am glad you were able to mine so much out of a narrative that was difficult for you. Plz sign the blog. Thanks
ReplyDeleteE
I'm curious about this "European man." Why is he European, for instance? Does it have something to do with the white culture that invades the house when Helen's father plays European music? This somewhat comic creation of Helen's imagination works to further estrange her from her family and their creepy house, or perhaps embodies that estrangement.
ReplyDelete--Gina