A Review of The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt
Thursday, Nov 17, 2011 at 4:32pmHired killers Eli and Charlie Sisters set out from Oregon City in 1851 for Sacramento, California and the gold fields to complete a contract for their boss. In a fog of alcohol and the stress of coping with a beloved but bumbling horse, Eli and Charlie stagger on, executing anyone who gets in their way. As they win and lose a fortune in gold on more than one occasion, the brothers re-examine their relationship and their purpose in life.
The Sisters Brothers is a gory, brutal yet somehow funny re-telling of the classic western and has just won the 2011 Governor General's Award for Fiction as well as the 2011 Rogers Writer's Trust Award for Fiction. It is being talked about by many booksellers around here and will appeal to readers of any age and of many literary tastes.
Categories: Reviews |
See:
The Sisters Brothers
-
Trade paperback
$24.99
Reader Reward Price: $22.49
Winner of the 2011 Governor General's Award for Fiction, the 2011 Roger's Writers Trust Prize, and the 2012 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and whom he does it for.With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters - losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life - and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humour, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.