The Reviewers Brothers

Hey,

So a couple days ago I finished up The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt. It's a picaresque Western.

The main character is Eli Sisters, one half of the notorious Sisters Brothers. Eli and his brother Charlie are guns for hire working out of Oregon City for a local kingpin known only as The Commodore. The Commodore is sending the brothers south to San Francisco to kill Herman Kermit Warm for vague reasons.

So Eli and Charlie set out and have a number of small adventures and mis-adventures along the way. While Charlie is a serious killer, Eli mostly loves his older brother and does whatever it takes to protect him. Eli is also a simple-minded introspective sort and he ponders a lot of things as the pair make their way down to San Francisco in search of their quarry.

The book sort of reminds me of The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and while this novel is much better in a lot of respects, there's still a rather disjoint feel to the book. Various characters wander in and out and a few things are thrown in just to be strange and unusual or deliberately opaque. It all leaves you vaguely unsatisfied although unlike a lot of picaresque novels, the protagonists are definitely affected by their journeys and undergo some amount of change.

So not a bad read, but nothing amazing either.

later
Tom

The Reviewers Brothers

Hey,

So a couple days ago I finished up The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt. It's a picaresque Western.

The main character is Eli Sisters, one half of the notorious Sisters Brothers. Eli and his brother Charlie are guns for hire working out of Oregon City for a local kingpin known only as The Commodore. The Commodore is sending the brothers south to San Francisco to kill Herman Kermit Warm for vague reasons.

So Eli and Charlie set out and have a number of small adventures and mis-adventures along the way. While Charlie is a serious killer, Eli mostly loves his older brother and does whatever it takes to protect him. Eli is also a simple-minded introspective sort and he ponders a lot of things as the pair make their way down to San Francisco in search of their quarry.

The book sort of reminds me of The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and while this novel is much better in a lot of respects, there's still a rather disjoint feel to the book. Various characters wander in and out and a few things are thrown in just to be strange and unusual or deliberately opaque. It all leaves you vaguely unsatisfied although unlike a lot of picaresque novels, the protagonists are definitely affected by their journeys and undergo some amount of change.

So not a bad read, but nothing amazing either.

later
Tom