Though this novel is quite different from the other books I have reviewed, which tend to belong to the fantasy genre, I nonetheless was intrigued to read it, because of three things: the bizarre cover, the awards it has won, and descriptions I had heard about its graphic depiction of violence.

Actually, fantasy readers might like this book because it is a fine work of genre fiction: that is to say, the Western. Westerns follow many of the romance conventions that inspire fantasy novels. Just as Sir Lancelot rides into castles, performs deeds for the king, wins fame and fortune, and rides out, back on his quest for the Holy Grail, Charlie and Eli Sisters, the protagonists of DeWitt’s novel, have multiple side-adventures.

Their quest is to fulfill their contract for the mysterious man named the Commodore, by murdering the prospector Hermann Kermit Warm. But then they begin to question the moral nature of their violent and dangerous job…
The adventures the two Sisters brothers may appear to be random, but in midst of the grit and melancholy of the Old West, little insights into the human condition surface, glowing like pieces of gold dust in a mighty California river.

The story focuses on the relationship between the two brothers Charlie and Eli. Charlie’s the taller and skinnier one, who loves a drink from the bottle, and he’s quicker on the trigger finger than his younger brother Eli. Eli is short and fat, but tries a vegetarian diet, caring for his half-blinded, pathetic horse Tub, much to his brother’s irritation. He’s also one of the only men in the Old West who brushes his teeth. He’s the one with the way for words, who tell the story through his first person perspective.

(Here I find myself describing another Don Quixote/Sancho Panza duo of assassins! Oddly enough, the two villains in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere are also two assassins with a similar character dynamic.)

Since critics often draw attention to the quality of the violence in the story, I had expected there to be more of it. Nonetheless, perhaps that made it easier to read. The style of violence is compared to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It is dryly understated, almost casual. Eli gives less attention to some scenes of violence than he does to a description of how he orders a salad. We learn that Charlie is not above threatening someone with his pistol to get what he wants, and I was left wondering several times about whether he would actually initiate a bloodbath, or just let the insults that had been hurled at him slide. I have experienced similar reactions watching Quentin Tarantino films. The violence is well written, but quite glory (a.k.a. not just employing sight, but smell and sound as well).

There are also chilling dialogue scenes, where the words of speech alone somehow convey great fear, or desperation. DeWitt is worth reading simply for the dialogue, and for the way he writes Eli’s thoughts with a sensitivity for eighteenth-century speech patterns. The two brothers’ speech is surprisingly formal, to the point where I thought it was almost like reading Tolkien’s dialogue in The Lord of the Rings, since it was at times so direct and simple.

This novel was my first Western, so if you haven’t been introduced to the genre, The Sisters Brothers may be a good place to start. Also, if you’re interested in finding out what all the buzz is about this American Western written by a Canadian, who won numerous awards for it, including the Rogers Writer’s Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award (not to mention being a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Man Booker Prize), then read this book, by all means.

Also, if you are a fantasy novel reader and wish to get into a new genre, or if you just want to learn about the tropes of the classic Western, then look no further that The Sisters Brothers. Read a book outside your normal stomping grounds, and open a new frontier, as crazy as the Wild West.