Jolting post- mortem of life
A novel with a beguiling title and an author with a wonderfully exotic name. Patty Yumi Cottrell’s first fiction elbows the perimeters of conventional good taste, in a pedal- to- the- metal, four- day plot of short, edgy sections. Thirty- something Helen Moran is an emerging artist ( assemblages from found objects) and submerging social worker ( troubled, troubling youth). She’s in her Manhattan apartment, signing for a designer couch, when the phone rings to tell her that her brother — adopted, like her — has killed himself. She’s understandably distraught — and irritated. After all, she’s a busy woman, plus, it means that now she’ll never be able to end her life that way. Startled? Offended? Brace yourself. Jolts come in seismograph loads as Helen heads for Milwaukee and the funeral, where she plans a “proper forensic examination” of what, why and how. There follow wonderfully jarring scenes as she barges into the household of pallid parents whom she hasn’t spoken to for five years. Then there’s the dead cat in the closet; oh, and the cockroaches under the kitchen counter. Helen is Cottrell’s great success. She’s appalling and affecting; breath- catchingly self- absorbed; studies herself like a surgical specimen. Every emotional failure and bodily fluid is catalogued. She’s also judderingly honest and it’s this quality that lifts her incessant “I” into a paradigm of “us”. It’s a feverish narrative. Everyone is on or over the edge of disintegration. Glasses are not just half full; they usually have dead flies in them as well. A floor is “dilapidated wood with deep crevices that collected dirt and dead skin cells”. Preparations for the funeral are a pantomime where the clowns weep in corners. Helen’s conversational technique turns condolences into car crashes. Sincere sympathies are interrupted by her monologues on how she’s made peace with her uterus. Through it all, she edges towards an acceptance of fallibility and “a beautiful design”, even as she manages to turn flower- buying and ceremony- attending into comic catastrophes. You’ll gasp, guffaw and glance around to make sure nobody has heard you. A genuinely remarkable debut.