The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

Catchy title, yes? And you ought to see the book jacket. (I know most people could probably transport it to this blog from some other web site, but I can't. You owe it to yourself to look it up.) This has one of the best covers ever.

The story is about Eli and Charlie Sisters, two brothers who are hired killers in the Old West, at the time of the California Gold Rush. For most of the book they are traveling (by horseback, of course) from Oregon City to Sacramento to kill a prospector who has "probably stolen" something from their employer. Along the way, they meet several unique characters, have life-or-death adventures, and casually kill several people who don't cooperate with them. Once they reach California, events take a surreal tone and the ending is not what any of the characters would have anticipated.

All along the way, Eli (who is the narrator) is thinking about how he would like to get out of the killing business and perhaps become a storekeeper. It's not so much a crisis of conscience as a desire to have some human closeness, which his profession pretty much precludes.

This novel reads like a cross between Charles Portis's True Grit and a Quentin Tarentino film. From Portis we get the narrative voice, which is formal and stilted, with no contractions. From Tarentino we get the intermingling of clever dialogue about random subjects with episodes of ultra-violence, which creates a kind of black graveyard humor. I see this novel as a parody of the serious western and of the film noir genre. It is clever; I'll give you that.

But, ultimately, I am less than impressed. I believe I am in the minority with this opinion, because this book has many positive reviews, and it was short listed for the Booker Prize. Whatever.

The Sisters Brothers is amusing in a dark way, it reads very fast, and it will make an excellent movie. It already reads like a movie script.

A final note: Comparisons have been made between this novel and the books of Cormac McCarthy. Yes, they are both very violent, but McCarthy's violence is real and visceral and disturbing. The violence in this book is presented in such a way that it seems incidental. That's a world of difference.