HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Loading...

The Sisters Brothers (original 2011; edition 2012)

by Patrick deWitt

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
4,2513102,747 (3.88)1 / 706
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.… (more)
Member:MdR87
Title:The Sisters Brothers
Authors:Patrick deWitt
Info:Granta Books (2012), Paperback, 325 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:None

Work Information

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (2011)

  1. 101
    No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (derelicious)
  2. 60
    True Grit by Charles Portis (ShelfMonkey)
  3. 50
    Doc by Mary Doria Russell (Citizenjoyce)
    Citizenjoyce: Gunslingers and philosophy populate both books.
  4. 40
    Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry (Limelite)
  5. 40
    Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (whymaggiemay)
    whymaggiemay: Both have a wonderful, authentic flavor of the old west.
  6. 10
    The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen (VictoriaPL)
  7. 10
    Close Range by Annie Proulx (Cecilturtle)
  8. 10
    Twilight by William Gay (tandah, tandah)
    tandah: Not as dark as 'Twilight' but it is a violent western road trip and both very well written.
  9. 10
    The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (ocgreg34)
  10. 00
    Woe to Live On by Daniel Woodrell (alanteder)
  11. 00
    The Whip: A Novel Inspired by the Story of Charley Parkhurst by Karen Kondazian (Anonymous user)
  12. 00
    The Big Sky by Jr. A. B. Guthrie (47degreesnorth)
    47degreesnorth: Exploring the old west with it's treachery and possibilities
  13. 02
    Frog Music by Emma Donoghue (sturlington)
    sturlington: Both set around the same time in California.
  14. 02
    Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson (cf66)
    cf66: Sería interesante confrontar la visión del mundo de los protagonistas.
  15. 04
    The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer (Limelite)
    Limelite: Both these Westerns turn the genre on its ear. "Not John Wayne's Old West."
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

Group TopicMessagesLast Message 
 Booker Prize: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt25 unread / 25rudder, September 2013

» See also 706 mentions

English (302)  French (3)  Dutch (2)  Spanish (1)  Danish (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (310)
Showing 1-5 of 302 (next | show all)
I don't get it. best part of this book was the cover. ( )
  hmonkeyreads | Jan 25, 2024 |
Creepy but engrossing. A fine tale. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
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.

( )
  ryantlaferney87 | Dec 8, 2023 |
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. ( )
  VivienneR | Sep 2, 2023 |
Disappointing -lauded as funny- quirky yes but not funny ( )
  HelenGress | Aug 25, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 302 (next | show all)
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.
added by geocroc | editThe Guardian, Jane Smiley (Jul 15, 2011)
 
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. ...
 

» Add other authors (3 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Patrick deWittprimary authorall editionscalculated
Aronson, EmmanuelleTraductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Aronson, PhilippeTraductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Chong, Suet YeeDesignersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Stiles, DanCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
/
Dedication
Voor mijn moeder
For my mother
First words
I was sitting outside the Commodore's mansion, waiting for my brother Charlie to come out with news of the job.
Quotations
We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.
The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know.
Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.
To me, luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.
What would the world be, I thought, without money hung around our necks, hung around our very souls?
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

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.

Book description
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 Sacremento, Eli begins to question what he does-and whom he does it for. With The Brothers Sisters, 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, 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 humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love. (ARC)
Haiku summary
The Sisters brothers?
Guns for hire, but Eli
Fancies a job change.
(passion4reading)

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.88)
0.5 2
1 13
1.5 5
2 69
2.5 11
3 299
3.5 140
4 659
4.5 120
5 318

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,186,353 books! | Top bar: Always visible