The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Nov. 30th, 2011 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
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.
It’s 1851 and Charlie and Eli Sister are killers working for a man known as the Commodore who sends them from Oregon to California to kill a man called Hermann Kermit Warm. As the brothers make the long journey, Eli begins to question what they do for a living and why, along the way noting the hardships of life on the frontier and the madness that went with the Californian gold rush.
When they arrive in Sacramento to carry out their task, they discover why the Commodore wants Warm dead. Presented with an opportunity to change their lives, Charlie and Eli must each re-evaluate their existence and for the first time, decide how they want to shape their futures …
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011, Patrick deWitt’s novel is a stylized Western come road trip novel in which a brutal man considers what it means to live in brutal times.
Told by Eli in a pitch-perfect first person voice, deWitt’s language is sparse, his imagery stripped down and the narrative lingering. Eli is a simple man - an admitted killer who accepts that he has it within him to unleash terrible violence but doesn’t get the same pleasure from it as Charlie. The brothers have known violence for most of their lives – their father having beaten their mother until Charlie stops it – but it’s beginning to sicken Eli, who realises as the journey progresses that his capacity for rage is manipulated by Charlie for his own ends and worse, that Charlie doesn’t trust him enough to tell him everything.
The further Eli travels, the more he realises that he wants something more from life, to marry and settle down. There are some heart breaking scenes in the book, but the most affecting for me were Eli’s clumsy courtship of a hotel owner, which plays out with his concern about his weight and dull looks and concludes with Charlie destroying his dreams. What interests me is how Eli’s self-realisation and his growing love for his useless horse is contrasted with his almost dispassionate view to other humans, notably a boy they meet in California who’s been robbed and beaten.
This was a great book that had me engrossed from beginning to end – an anti-hero story where you root for both of them, I think that it well deserved its Booker shortlisting and look forward to deWitt’s next work.
The Verdict:
Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2011, Patrick deWitt’s novel takes the Western format and adds a road story, which make for a brutal, compelling and ultimately human read that follows two violent anti-heroes and their attempts to improve themselves in violent times. I found this affecting, human and wonderful and really look forward to reading deWitt’s next book.
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.
It’s 1851 and Charlie and Eli Sister are killers working for a man known as the Commodore who sends them from Oregon to California to kill a man called Hermann Kermit Warm. As the brothers make the long journey, Eli begins to question what they do for a living and why, along the way noting the hardships of life on the frontier and the madness that went with the Californian gold rush.
When they arrive in Sacramento to carry out their task, they discover why the Commodore wants Warm dead. Presented with an opportunity to change their lives, Charlie and Eli must each re-evaluate their existence and for the first time, decide how they want to shape their futures …
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011, Patrick deWitt’s novel is a stylized Western come road trip novel in which a brutal man considers what it means to live in brutal times.
Told by Eli in a pitch-perfect first person voice, deWitt’s language is sparse, his imagery stripped down and the narrative lingering. Eli is a simple man - an admitted killer who accepts that he has it within him to unleash terrible violence but doesn’t get the same pleasure from it as Charlie. The brothers have known violence for most of their lives – their father having beaten their mother until Charlie stops it – but it’s beginning to sicken Eli, who realises as the journey progresses that his capacity for rage is manipulated by Charlie for his own ends and worse, that Charlie doesn’t trust him enough to tell him everything.
The further Eli travels, the more he realises that he wants something more from life, to marry and settle down. There are some heart breaking scenes in the book, but the most affecting for me were Eli’s clumsy courtship of a hotel owner, which plays out with his concern about his weight and dull looks and concludes with Charlie destroying his dreams. What interests me is how Eli’s self-realisation and his growing love for his useless horse is contrasted with his almost dispassionate view to other humans, notably a boy they meet in California who’s been robbed and beaten.
This was a great book that had me engrossed from beginning to end – an anti-hero story where you root for both of them, I think that it well deserved its Booker shortlisting and look forward to deWitt’s next work.
The Verdict:
Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2011, Patrick deWitt’s novel takes the Western format and adds a road story, which make for a brutal, compelling and ultimately human read that follows two violent anti-heroes and their attempts to improve themselves in violent times. I found this affecting, human and wonderful and really look forward to reading deWitt’s next book.
