“Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is prescient and captivating, hilarious and horrifying.
A book that enchants and entices and enrages is a rare thing; Patrick Cottrell has once
again solidified his prose as knowing, and generous, and vicious, and tender.” - Bryan Washington, author of Palaver, National Book Award finalist
“While reading Afternoon Hours of a Hermit, I was rapt, jolted, and thrilled.
I lost count of how many times I paused to reread a line, astonished by its precision, truth,
and hilarity. I have fallen irrevocably in love with this novel; I want to write it a song.
Read this book if you want to feel more alive.” - R. O. Kwon, nationally bestselling author of Exhibit
“A rain-soaked neo-noir and a comedy of manners, a philosophical disquisition,
and a wrenching exploration of grief, Patrick Cottrell’s Afternoon Hours of a Hermit
is the work of an extraordinarily gifted writer. It is one of the most
singular and thrilling novels I have read in years.” - Katie Kitamura, author of Audition, shortlisted for the Booker Prize
“A hilarious and heart-wrenching whodunit where the central question is not who
committed murder but what, exactly, is dead. With precise and crystalline prose,
Patrick Cottrell deploys the visual and linguistic vocabulary of a noir to gripping effect.
Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is a brilliant, comedy-laden meditation
on the liquid, hard-to-capture qualities of grief.” - Rita Bullwinkel, author of Headshot, Pulitzer Prize finalist
“Patrick Cottrell writes prose that is so clean, resonant, and pitch-perfect, it’s like
listening to someone play the cello in a completely silent music hall. Somehow it is also
a virtuosic work of comedy. It is not an overstatement to say that
Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is a novel of genius.” - Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize finalist