The Sisters Brothers - Softcover

DeWitt, Patrick

3.85

97,189 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847086004 ISBN 13: 9781847086006

Publisher: Granta Books, 2011

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Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride - fighting, shooting, and drinking their way to Sacramento. But their prey isn't an easy mark, the road is long and bloody, and somewhere along the path Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and whom he does it for. The Sisters Brothers pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable ribald tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of losers, cheaters, and 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.

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Review:

"Cinematic, wry and mannered.... Just as much as THE SISTERS BROTHERS is about a killing, it's also about the difficulty of holding on to or setting aside all the things a killer has to convince himself of to make his life palatable."--Philadelphia City Paper "DeWitt creates a homage to life in the Wild West but at the same time reveals its brutality."--Kirkus Reviews "A gorgeous, wise, riveting work of, among other things, cowboy noir....Honestly, I can't recall ever being this fond of a pair of psychopaths."--David Wroblewski, bestselling author of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" "A feast of delights in short punchy chapters.... Deliciously original and rhapsodically funny, this is one novel that ropes you in on page one, and isn't about to ride off into the sunset any time soon."--Boston Globe "Funny and strange [and] oddly warm...you'll find yourself ashamedly pulling for the brothers Sisters like you did for Jules and Vinnie in Pulp Fiction."--Outside magazine "[A] thrilling, smart and surprisingly touching read...visual and visceral...always compelling and surprising."--BookPage ."..quirky and ultimately touching...The Sisters Brothers will seem a cruel romp to some, but Patrick Dewitt has written more than that, leaving in our hands not just a warning about the American Dream but a primer on how to deal with its legacy."--Anniston Star "If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he might have concocted a story like Patrick DeWitt's bloody, darkly funny western THE SISTERS BROTHERS...[DeWitt has] a skillfully polished voice and a penchant for gleefully looking under bloody bandages."--Los Angeles Times "Patrick deWitt's latest novel, The Sisters Brothers [evokes]... a feeling you revel in the re-creation of even more than you would enjoy going back to the original experience at its source."--The Stranger "A twisted delight...Familiar, yes, but never not fresh. Also: creepy and sometimes inscrutable, gory with multiple amputations, rollicking and wistful and roundly winning."--Austin Chronicle "Patrick deWitt's narrator--a hired killer with a bad conscience and a melancholy disposition--is a brilliant and memorable creation."--Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of "Little Children" "This book is flat-out good times. Sarcastic, drunk, murderous cowboys...sign me up! ....Do yourself a favor and just read it."--Good Reads "The brothers' punchily poetic banter and the book's bracing bursts of violence keep this campfire yarn pulled taut."--The Onion AV Club "DeWitt has produced a genre-bending frontier saga that is exciting, funny, and, perhaps unexpectedly, moving."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Both homage to the classic Western and knife thrust to its dark underbelly, this novel has a quirky, deadpan exterior and a hard-beating heart; we come to see how men die and how the brotherly bond shifts but holds.... I was intrigued by page one."--Library Journal ."..gritty, as well as deadpan and often very comic...DeWitt has chosen a narrative voice so sharp and distinctive...it's very narrowing of possibilities opens new doors in the imagination."--New York Times Book Review "Sharp and wondrous...[a] funny, oddly moving novel."--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Weirdly funny, startlingly violent and steeped in sadness... It's all rendered irresistible by Eli Sisters, who narrates with a mixture of melancholy and thoughtfulness."--Washington Post "Original, entrancing and entertaining."--Denver Post "Mesmerizing... The book seduces us to its characters, and draws us on the strength of deWitt's subtle, nothing-wasted prose. He writes with gorgeous precision about the grotesque: an amputation, a gouged eye, a con in a dive bar, a nauseating body count [without] macho brutishness."--Cleveland Plain Dealer "Portland author Patrick DeWitt has hit on a sure-fire road to success."--Portland Book Review "At once dark and touching, "The Sisters Brothers" has something on every page to make you laugh. Patrick deWitt has given us a gift, reimagining the old west in a thoroughly original manner. Readers are all the better for it."--Charles Bock, "New York Times" bestselling author of "Beautiful Children" "Wandering his Western landscape with the cool confidence of a practiced pistoleer, deWitt's steady hand belies a hair trigger, a poet's heart and an acute sense of gallows humor...the reader is likely to reach the adventure's end in the same shape as Eli: wounded but bettered by the ride."--Time Out New York "A masterful, hilarious picaresque that keeps company with the best of Charles Portis and Mark Twain, "The Sisters Brothers" is a relentlessly absorbing feat of novelistic art."--Wells Tower, author of "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" "A bright, brutal revision of the Western, "The Sisters Brothers" offers an unexpected meditation on life, and on the crucial difference between power and strength."--Gil Adamson, author of "The Outlander" "By turns hilarious, graphic and meditative, The Sisters Brothers hooked me from page one all the way to 300 -- and I could have stayed on for many more."--NPR.org "If you're looking for an unforgettable western, grab this one."--Monday Mag "Thrilling...a lushly voiced picaresque story...so richly told, so detailed, that what emerges is a weird circus of existence, all steel shanks and ponies, gut shots and medication poured into the eyeholes of the dying. At some level, this too is a kind of revenge story, marvelously blurry."--Esquire ."..a pitch-perfect page-turner...The Sisters Brothers... cleverly refreshes the classic western novel by injecting it with absurdity, offbeat humor, and elements of the picaresque...at once highly entertaining and strangely affecting."--Critical Mob "[THE SISTERS BROTHERS] is full of surprises, among them...is the quirky beauty of the language Patrick deWitt has devised for his narrator.... THE SISTERS BROTHERS is deWitt's second novel...and is an inventive and ingenious character study. It will make you impatient for the third."--Dallas Morning News "A wickedly funny and innovative novel."--Roanoke Times "A rollicking Western adventure...THE SISTERS BROTHERS...is a great success both in the "literary" sense of a beautiful written and emotionally compelling, and in the sense that it is a genuinely badass Western."--The Faster Times ."..a heck of a lot of fun to read and surprisingly compelling when it ends."--Capital Times "DeWitt's THE SISTERS BROTHERS is a glorious picaresque Western; everything about this book is stylish, from its conceit to its cover design making it a truly worthy inclusion on the shortlist."--Daily Beast "DeWitt's exploitations of the picaresque form are striking, and he has a wonderful way of exercising his comic gifts without ever compromising the novel's gradual accumulation of darkness, disgust, and foreboding."--The Millions

From the Back Cover:

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

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.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick 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, and 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.

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