Tag Archives: westerns

“The Sisters Brothers,” from the Notables List

Last week, I finished “The Sisters Brothers” by Patrick DeWitt, a novel from the American Library Association Notable Books List.

Charles and Eli Sisters are hired guns from the Gold Rush era of the 1850s. Eli tells this story of their final job for a man called The Commodore. As the story progresses, Eli makes up his mind to leave the killing business.

I’m trying to find a way to describe the tone of this book–it’s picaresque, in introducing a series of odd somewhat shallow characters. It’s often droll. And it is full of killing. I had to move my mind into a place where I didn’t take all that murder too seriously.

Eli clearly has a bigger heart than his brother. Eli reflects on how he might want to find a woman to marry and love, might want to return to see their mother. Charles seems not to reflect much at all, he thrives on heavy drinking and the adrenaline of taking a good shot.

Why is this notable? DeWitt creates clever scenes and dialogue, and he gives us a whole new sense of the Gold Rush. There’s an inherent irony in a hired killer pining for love and a comfortable home. The stark heartlessness of lives lived solely in pursuit of gold remains visible behind the humor. Hired killers see many people face their final moments, DeWitt makes the most of that opportunity.

My reservation is this–I don’t think that DeWitt’s idea for the Sisters Brothers’ story creates enough momentum to propel a whole novel. It’d be a brilliant short story, and perhaps overall more effective as a short story collection. I’m open to the idea that this may simply be a case of not matching my sense of humor. While I finished “The Sisters Brothers,” it never deeply resonated with me and seldom had me laughing out loud. And yet, there’s something about it that I respect. I expect that I’ll recommend this to people who seek something that is unusual, edgy and clever, and that points up people’s foibles while it reveals their behavior under pressure.