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Loading... The Sisters Brothers (original 2011; edition 2012)by Patrick deWitt
Work InformationThe Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (2011)
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I don't get it. best part of this book was the cover. ( ) The Sisters Brothers (shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2011) is one of those rare genre novels. It's a western yes, but it is so much more than just your standard adventure novel. The story is dark comedy that is essentially about the bonds of family and human nature. The story focuses on The Sisters brothers Eli and Charlie, who are two famous paid killers working for the Commodore. They are hired to find and kill a prospector in San Fransisco during the Gold Rush. The novel presents their journey to California and their adventures while they are there. The novel really is a psychological examination of what it means to have the same blood; to be kin. Eli and Charlie could not be more different from each other. Charlie is bossy, impulsive, a bit of psychopath, loves to drink and does not hold too much respect for his brother. Eli, on the other hand, is sensitive, loves his brother, cares for his horses, does not enjoy killing people uselessly and his dream is to settle down with a woman. The story is told by Eli, in a gorgeous, wise voice that is also comic. One gets the sense that Eli strives to be a good man but can't quite escape the violent and disturbing nature that seems to run in his blood. This makes it all the more satisfying when the brothers' quest come to end and movingly, Eli returns home to his mother. It's not quite settling down with a woman per se that Eli longs for but it seems to be a sensible ending to this tragicomedy. Comparisons to Charles Portis (who wrote one of my favorite novels, True Grit) and Mark Twain are apt. This is dark, strange, funny, and unexpectedly moving frontier saga about the bonds of brotherhood, the dark nature of man, the power of greed, and the need for connection. This was my second reading and more enjoyable than the first when the book was in the throes of publicity hype, which only points to my contrariness. I enjoyed the humour more this time, and appreciated the fine qualities of the good-natured Eli, a generally kind and generous man. His appreciation of the new toothbrush and powder was delightful. However, the contrasting violent scenes keep this from being a sweet, sleep-inducing account. Not only was this a well told story, filled with wonderful characters, but the relationship between the brothers is remarkably complex. Both are hired guns, and while Charlie is belligerent and violent, Eli can pull his weight with a gun yet is understanding of his brother's malevolence. I'm glad I gave this entertaining book a second chance.
Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage,and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark; passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves. You aren't a passenger, you don't care about that destination, and the whole train rumbles on without you. Much has been made, over the last few decades, about the death of the western as a genre. All this talk, however, seems to overlook a single, crucial point: the western was never just a genre....DeWitt not only plays the western straight, he draws from the best. Written with the parsed force of the best of Elmore Leonard, DeWitt’s closest CanLit antecedent seems to be Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. The influence comes through not only in his attention to every word, every detail, but also in the deadpan, unflinching depiction of violence, reality elevated almost to the level of ridiculousness...Despite being deliberately and effectively part of a tradition (one can imagine it being written and read a hundred years ago, with a few caveats), The Sisters Brothers is a bold, original and powerfully compelling work, grounded in well-drawn characters and a firm hold on narrative. When they say “They don’t write em like that anymore,” they’re wrong. Because rather than concerning himself with showboating his period-specific research, deWitt has deliberately flouted the rules of straight-laced historical realism here, to stunning effect. And most importantly, what he does get right are the flawed and jagged hearts of his characters, which is all the real this reviewer needs....What Western is real anyway? Aren’t they all revisions and stylizations of the past? From the kindergarten morals and the ridiculous bloodlessness of Hollywood Westerns, to Louis L’Amour’s pat Harlequin Romances for men, to the populist machismo of spaghetti Westerns and their impossibly slow gun duels, the genre has never registered very high on the reality scale.....The overall effect is fresh, hilariously anti-heroic, often genuinely chilling, and relentlessly compelling. Yes, this is a mighty fine read, and deWitt a mighty fine writer. There never was a more engaging pair of psychopaths than Charlie and Eli Sisters, two brothers who kill for hire—and for necessity, and sometimes for the pure, amusing hell of it....So subtle is DeWitt’s prose, so slyly note-perfect his rendition of Eli’s voice in all its earnestly charming 19th-century syntax, and so compulsively readable his bleakly funny western noir story, that readers will stick by Eli even as he grinds his heel into the shattered skull of an already dead prospector. Nothing in Patrick deWitt’s first novel, Ablutions, a laconic barfly’s lament for a dysfunctional life, could prepare you for his second, a triumphantly dark, comic anti-western; apart, that is, from the same devastating sense of confidence and glittering prose. ...The writing is superb, with each brief chapter a separate tale in itself, relayed in Eli’s aphoristic fashion. The scope is both cinematic and schematic, with a swaggering, poetic feel reminiscent of a Bob Dylan lyric, while the author retains gleefully taut control of the overall structure. ... Belongs to Publisher SeriesHas the adaptationAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
When a frontier baron known as the Commodore orders Charlie and Eli Sisters, his hired gunslingers, to track down and kill a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm, the brothers journey from Oregon to San Francisco, and eventually to Warm's claim in the Sierra foothills, running into a witch, a bear, a dead Indian, a parlor of drunken floozies, and a gang of murderous fur trappers. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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