The Sisters Brothers: Patrick deWitt

Oregon City, 1851. The infamous Sisters brothers, Charlie and Eli, are contracted by the mysterious and powerful Commodore to kill one Herman Warm, resident of San Francisco. They don't know why. It's not their business. Theirs is, as Kipling might say, to do or die. So they begin their journey south to the city, and it is a journey fraught with peril and hints of redemption.

This lovely book is stark, bleak, and paints a rough picture of life in the West, particularly in the decadent and dangerous Gold Rush era California. It's certainly not a happy book by any stretch but it avoids being maudlin by its precise and unembellished writing, and its macabre nature is treated so normally as to induce the reader into this world of normal violence.

But what is particularly impressive about the novel are the two main characters, Charlie and Eli Sisters. The story is told through the narration of Eli, the younger of the two, and of the two brothers one would properly suspect that he is the more ruminative, the more thoughtful of them. Charlie's propensity for violence is no more than Eli's, but Charlie's cold-bloodedness and hard-heartedness present a particular challenge to the softer Eli. Eli wants out of this career they have carved for themselves as the Commodore's hired guns; he dreams of loving a woman and being loved; he remembers his lost mother with fondness and wishes to simply own a haberdashery. Charlie, however, appears cold and hard: he manipulates his brother's anger for his own use, thinking of Eli as his dog. Their mutual past experiences very much made them the men they grew into, but hints of Charlie's vulnerabilities appear in his abusive drinking. Led on by Eli, they walk a switchbacking track to redemption and trust, only to be derailed by an invention that might have made their futures clear, calm, and good.

The Sisters Brothers is an astounding novel, not the least for making you hope for and believe in the redemption of two killers, but also in the setting, the journey, the wistfulness of trying to right your wrongs. It reminded me of so many other books and films: No Country for Old Men (book and film), "True Grit" (film), the writings of Cormac McCarthy. But in so many ways, in the ways that count at least, Charlie and Eli's journey reminds me of The Odyssey in a way: two men on a meandering journey filled with danger and delights, on their way to an ultimate goal of a homecoming and its redemption. I picked up this novel mostly on the strength of its cover design, frankly, but this book has so much more than a pretty face. With nods to classic Westerns but with a wholly modern character-driven yarn, The Sisters Brothers is a darkly beautiful story, thorny and harsh and superb.

Other reviews out there include:

Descant Blog
The Vancouver Opera Blog (seriously!)
Jules' Book Reviews, where she is not as much of a fan
Black, White & Lace, who also didn't like it that well and questioned its inclusion on many Canadian books award lists (the author is Canadian but lives and works in Portland, Oregon)
Let's eat Grandpa!, whose name I love, reviews the audio version
Where Pen Meets Paper, has nicely included lengthy excerpts for your perusal
The Quick Brown Fox, where Francine Lee provides a longer review

For the more traditional outlets, try The Washington Post, The Oregonian, LA Times, NY Times, or The Telegraph.

By the way, I've linked this review over at The Man Booker Reading Project. If you've been waiting and biting your nails for that site to be ready, then first of all your nails are probably gone and second, the site is up and running (with the exception of 2003-2007 and parts of 2008 and 1986.) Why don't you head over and link up your reviews of Booker nominated and winning books? Mr Booker would be oh-so-pleased.