The Sisters Brothers cover

Review: The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers coverThe Sisters Brothers
Author: Patrick deWitt;
Genre: Western, satire;
Format: Ebook;
Publisher: Ecco (2011);
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5).

Damn that cover.

It drew me in and wouldn’t let me go. The designer was Suet Yee Chong at Harper Collins, and she perfectly captured the contents of this story.

It’s dark, it’s violent, and it’s quite silly at times. I laughed aloud at least twice, which is saying something… so to speak. It’s a western that involves a lot of drinking and shooting and stealing. You’re not supposed to actually like the protagonists, and you won’t, but you will at least pity Eli, the narrator. He doesn’t really enjoy killing, but he follows Charlie because, well, he’s his brother. And that’s enough . . . until it’s not.

The prose was an interesting mix of mid-19th-century language delivered in a sort of stream-of-consciousness, first-person viewpoint. Wow, that sentence used a lot of hyphens.

Not for the squeamish. I’m talking to you, animal lovers. Step away.

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