Just when we thought all the cowboys were dead (the vampires had killed them all), Patrick DeWitt breathes new life into the Old West with his Giller Prize nominated novel The Sisters Brothers. In his highly acclaimed second novel, Dewitt introduces readers to Eli and Charlie Sisters, a widely-feared duo of assassins under the omniscient yet violent reign of the Commodore. The story begins as the two conflicting brothers embark on a new mission to find and kill one Hermann Kermit Warm who has done some unnamed crime against their blood-thirsty master. However, their task brings them into some difficult and unchartered territory, and the brothers find themselves involved relentlessly in a struggle which is both physical, and worse, psychological. Readers quickly find that these cowboys are not all bars, brawls and brothels – although there is quite a lot of that too.
The novel reads like an old Hollywood western, complete with two intermissions, an epilogue and concise chapters you’ll race through with the ease and speed of a belly through the bush. Although written in short, choppy chapters and sentences – true to real Southern-twang and free from frivolity – five or six words alone will hit you with such a force that there is nothing left to do but sit back and say “dang!” There is a striking contrast between the abrupt form, the crude subject matter and the entirely heart-warming sentiment behind DeWitt’s words. It is at all times humourous, tender and tragic. While the Sisters brothers reign in a time nearly unrecognizable to our own, the chaos and destitution of the California gold rush, Eli’s insights are no less relevant today. In this short excerpt, Eli discusses life in San Francisco in a description that is still fairly comparable, and eerily so:
“It is a wild time here, is it not?” I said to the man.
“It is wild. I fear it has ruined my character. It has certainly ruined the characters of others.” He nodded, as though answering himself. “Yes, it has ruined me.”
“How are you ruined?” I asked.
“How am I not?” he wondered.
“Couldn’t you return to your home to start over?”
He shook his head. “Yesterday I saw a man leap from the roof of the Orient Hotel, laughing all the way to the ground, upon which he fairly exploded. He was drunk they say, but I had seen him sober shortly before this. There is a feeling here, which if it gets you, will envenom your very center. It is a madness of possibilities. That leaping man’s final act was the embodiment of the collective mind of San Francisco. I understood it completely. I had a strong desire to applaud, if you want to know the truth.”
“I don’t understand the purpose of this story,” I said.
“I could leave here and return to my hometown, but I would not return as the person I was when I left,” he explained. “I would not recognize anyone. And no one would recognize me.” Turning to watch the town, he petted his fowl and chuckled. A single pistol shot was heard in the distance; hoofbeats; a woman’s scream, which turned to cackling laughter. “A great, greedy heart!” he said, and then walked toward it, disappearing into it. Down the beach, the man with the whip stood away from the dead horse, staring out at the bay and the numberless masts. He had removed his hat. He was unsure, and I did not envy him.
Despite moments of cowboy cliche, and embellishments that I’m sure would make any American historian squirm, DeWitt’s writing is deserving of it’s praise and this novel is an insightful, enjoyable and dignified piece of literature. You will find no balderdash here, The Sisters Brothers is an ace in the hole!