The Sisters Brothers are essentially hired killers in
America in 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters are employed to find a man named
Hermann Kermit Warm and kill him. Their friend Henry Morris has been sent on
ahead to scout out where Warm is and what his habits are. It turns out Warm has
headed to California for the gold rush so the Sisters brothers must follow him
there. Along the way they meet a colourful cast of characters and must try and
survive long enough to get to their destination. Eli, the narrator, begins to
question what they do for a living and whether they should be hanging up their
pistols. Charlie has no such thoughts and Eli, being the younger, sort of goes
along with Charlie all the while trying to assess his life and what it means.
I enjoyed spending time in Eli’s head and was interested in
his inner conflict of wanting to give up his job but not wanting to leave his
brother. Charlie would not have been a good narrator as he is drunk a lot of
the time and isn’t fully aware of what’s going on around him. He is very alert
when he needs to be and can’t be beaten in a gun fight. Eli doesn’t have a
killing instinct to the same degree as Charlie but you still don’t want to mess
with him. In another era, Eli would have been a really nice guy and may have
been able to leave a double life, with a wife and kids but leaving on ‘business
trips’ to go and kill people. Even in this era he’s a nice guy, just confused.
I wasn’t sure about reading this book to begin with. The
first chapter is about the brothers’ horses and had the rest of the book been
like that I probably wouldn’t have continued. I haven’t seen or read any
westerns because I didn’t think I would find any interest in them. This one was
a nice read. It wasn’t too focused on being a western and had a lot more to it.
There was some psychology stuff and plenty of action. I was able to get into
the world fairly easily but I couldn’t manage to really enjoy being in the
world.
I think it helped that the book was nicely written and
didn’t take very long to read. The book is split into three parts with a couple
of intermissions. I didn’t really understand the point of the intermissions and
whether they were real or some sort of dream sequence or something. As the book
has an element of mystery in it, you have the build up, the journey and the
conclusion. This worked well too as it is a familiar formula to most readers so
it is something else that helps ease you in to the world of the western. I
don’t imagine it can really be called a western in the true sense of the word
but it certainly gives you a taste of it.
The book was better than I expected but I didn’t feel a big
connection to it. I did find myself liking Eli and enjoying his struggle. I can
understand why this book gained award attention when it first came out because
it’s so different to most other books out there. Except, when you look at what
it’s actually about, it’s not that different really; it just has an unusual
setting. I’m not really sure what to rate this book as it was really good but I
just can’t bring myself to give it four stars. I’d be interested to see what
this author writes next as it should be interesting. I would recommend people
give this book a chance and not dismiss it because of what it appears to be.
Overall rating 3.5 out of 5.
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