The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

(Originally posted to Instagram on January 30, 2024)

I track my reading habits with a spreadsheet and a series of charts because turning middle aged has made me more fun. My adventure numbers are looking pretty weak, so I wanted to bolster them a bit. I found The Sisters Brothers by googling “adventure Western novel” and the title caught my eye. It sounded funny

Well it is funny. Sometimes it made me laugh out loud hard enough that I had to stop reading for a bit. The premise is that the Sisters Brothers, Eli and Charlie, are guns-for-hire, murderers, assassins, whatever you want to call them. They’re quickdraw dudes in a Western who are hired to murder a prospector during the gold rush. The book is narrated by Eli, a confused and seemingly stupid young man who is trying to come into his own. However, he is often dominated by his brother Charlie, who is hard-spoken, impulsive, charismatic, and often pushy. When they’re alone, the two bicker about anything and everything. But when they’re out in the world, Eli almost always defers to Charlie.

Eli should be one of those famous narrators in big L Literature. He’s funny, he’s slow, he’s interesting, he’s contemplative. He has a unique way of looking at the world that I found very relatable at times. It’s clear that he struggles with the challenges and cruelty of the world, as well as the day-to-day of dealing with the horrors of (this era of) life in the United States. But he’s ultimately sweet and much smarter than he realizes, and really comes into his own by the end of the story.

I don’t want to get into a blow-by-blow of their adventures because the unpredictable nature of the plot is part of the fun. Parts of this are gross, parts are sad, parts show Eli’s quiet dignity, and parts violate that dignity in some of the weirdest ways you can imagine. The story goes so far as to veer into alt-history sci-fi type stuff towards the end, not so much that it’s in Brisco County Jr. territory, but it’s pretty out there. It has been made into a movie starring John C. Reilly and Joaquim Phoenix, but I haven’t seen it. If I ever do, I’ll post a review or update this post.

So yes, it is funny. It’s also a very melancholy examination of capitalism, greed, ambition, and the purpose of life. Yeah, it gets deep in a hurry. But the nice thing is it vacillates from sad to funny to tragic to absurd often enough that it wasn’t overwhelming. One of the interior quotes from a critic was “If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor” and that’s pretty darn close to how I felt reading this. Definitely recommended. Should be more famous than it is.