The Sisters Brothers Book

I've never been a big fan of Westerns so I'm not sure I would have picked up Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers had it not been my book club's selection for August. It's lucky for me then that someone else saw the potential in this book because it has actually turned out to be an excellent read.

The Sisters Brothers is a very character driven story with the unique and often diabolical personalities of the people involved being the key element that draws the reader in and keeps them hooked until the very end. For this reason, it's not the easiest book to precise, but basically: Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters are a notorious pair of hired guns who are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. While they may be a pair of professional killers, this particular job does not prove straightforward. Over the course of their journey south the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences amid the stark landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way, while Eli falls in love and begins to doubt his murderous profession. When they get to California, Charlie and Eli discover that Hermann Kermit Warm is an inventor whose latest discover could make them all a great deal of money. What happens next for the Sisters brothers is utterly gripping, strange and sad.

While The Sisters Brothers might sound like a standard Western, Patrick deWitt's darkly comic and arresting writing style elevates it above the majority of genre stories. It is certainly an exciting and passionate story of the Wild West, but it also malevolent, unsettling and incredibly revealing as to the perversity of human motivation. It really is a testimony to deWitt's writing skills that he manages to make seemingly merciless psychopaths like Eli and Charlie Sisters seem sympathetic. Given the nature of the brothers' profession as well as the people they encounter on their travels, it should be no surprise that there is a lot of violence in this book. However, while the violence can sometimes be extreme, it is always necessary to the plot and is often, in fact, softened by deWitt's excellent black humour.

This messages and warning in this book have stayed with me since I finished reading. I think I can say that it has had far more of an emotional impact and resonance with me than other books which initially sounded like they were more my kind of thing. I even think the book cover is one of the best designed that I have seen in ages. Given the quality of the writing as well as the power of the storyline, it is easy to see how The Sisters Brothers ended up on the Booker Prize shortlist. The winner of the prize is due to be revealed on the 18th October I think and I've certainly got my fingers crossed for Patrick deWitt.

From the author of the acclaimed ABLUTIONS, this dazzlingly original second novel is a darkly funny, offbeat Western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother, on the trail of a man named Warm - Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters...