This book has the coolest cover ever. What’s great, though, is that the coolness doesn’t end there.

Charlie and Eli sisters are Gold Rush–era contract killers. They’re hired for what Eli hopes to be their last job, as he’d much prefer to hang his holster and settle down with a nice girl—or failing that, the first trollop that crosses his path. It makes no difference to him, really (dude is such a sweetheart). Charlie, on the other hand, is the less sensitive one. It’d be tougher to convince him t More...

This ho-hum review of a ho-hum book got tricked up a bit and stuffed in a corner at Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

Oh, and if for some odd reason you have an opinion about my moving reviews off Goodreads, do feel free to keep it to yourself.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. More...

I wanted to love this book. It jumped off of my pile of shortlisted Booker Prize nominees and demanded to be read first. Everything about it shouted "Yes, it's literature, but IT's FUN." The premise is that of a classic picaresque novel -- Charlie and Eli Sisters, two professional assassins in 1850 are sent by their employer to hunt down and kill Herman Kermit Warm who may, or may not, have stolen something. In the course of their journey from Oregon to California, at the height of the gold rush More...

I like reading about bad people in fiction. And, lest we jump to conclusions, it's not because I'm a bad person myself (at least not in the torture or kill people kind of way; no, the sins in which I dabble are much more pedestrian than that), but it's because I like peering into those dark little corners of their brains. And, what is often the most frightening and fascinating is when I find that, really, they're much more like me than I care to admit.

Take Pulp Fiction, for example, which may b More...

A novel that is as whip-snap sharp and original as the artwork on the cover. Well, I say original, but who am I to judge, as I don't read Westerns and have never read any of the stuff that Mr de Witt is being compared to. I've not read Charles Portis (maybe I should?), although I did sit through the recent Coen Brothers film of True Grit, desperately trying to make out what on earth Jeff Bridges was mumbling about, and not succeeding most of the time. (How a man can win an Oscar for Best Actor w More...

Quite an amazing journey of a book. Prior to (or, perhaps, instead of) a review, I point to the cover: it's fantastic. The moon, with the Sisters brothers' heads like dark eyes in a skull - and whose skull is that? Why, it's Shakespeare's, is it not?



Indeed, there is something Shakespearean about this book - in its primal motivations; its themes of guilt, blame and remorse; the thickness of family ties; the inevitable playing out of fate. A tragi-comic morality play - although I have to confess, More...

I'm not quite sure what I read here;I'll have to file this one under Cutesy or Gimmicky. The author has put some thought into the premise and has really come up with some promising characters in the protagonists, a pair of killers for hire who happen to be on the payroll of a mysterious entity known only as "The Commodore". The mission the brothers have committed to requires them to kill a prospector who has developed a secret formula that enables him to find gold with a minimum of effort. If th More...

I just heard that Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel won the 2012 Booker. In the next few weeks, that book along with the nominees will start showing up in our bookstores here in Manila. I'd seen Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil already prior to the announcement but it is still hardcover so it is quite pricey so I resisted. I also thought I'd like to start with the winner and then the runner-ups.

Just like what I did for last year's Booker shortlisted novels and the eventual winner. In fact, last year More...

The Sisters Brothers exceeded my expectations. I was really dreading reading this for the Goodreads bookclub book because I usually hate westerns. Why do I hate them? Because it's so dirty! There's dust everywhere. Everyone has dry skin. And there's dirt everywhere. Luckily, this book alleviated my doubts thanks to the introduction of good oral hygiene. I kid you not.

The characters were enjoyable despite being mostly one-dimensional. The plot was entertaining and I honestly didn't really know wh More...

Damn. If this doesn't get shortlisted for both the Giller & the GG, something is seriously wrong. Unlike a lot of fiction that gets rewarded by Canadian prize juries, this work is not a navel-gazing inquiry into identity, isolation, or memory, but actually about the story, first and foremost. And it's well-written.

Two hired gun brothers sent from Oregon to San Francisco to carry out a killing, but of course things don't go as planned. McCarthy comparisons happening already, but the humour m More...

Charlie and Eli Sisters are notorious gunfighters---well, perhaps that’s too conventional a description. Charlie and Eli are notorious murderers who use guns or any other appropriate weapons to dispatch their intended targets but otherwise there is nothing conventional about them or this tale of the western frontier, set during the California gold rush. Charlie is the coldblooded older brother and Eli is the killer with a poetic conscience and a keen observer of human behavior, as well as the na More...

I need to start off by saying that I had to keep turning back to glimpse at the cover throughout this read – I absolutely adore the cover art!

The Sisters Brothers are guns for hire contracted by their employer, The Commodore. The Commodore is vague in his explanations of why he wants certain people killed, and so it is with the brothers’ next job: to kill Hermann Kermit Warm.

Set at the height of the Gold Rush, The Sisters brothers take off from Oregon and make their trip to San Francisco in se More...

This is a pretty good book. While it's billed as a dark comedy the humor mostly left me cold, in other words I didn't find the humor that humorous.

The Sisters Brothers are noted killers who work for the Commodore. Cross the Commodore, steal from the Commodore, wrong the Commodore or just get on the Commodore's wrong side and you'll probably see the Sisters Brothers or not if they see you fist and Charlie thinks you might be a bit much to take on from the front.

Charlie is the lead man, now. It s More...

I loved this book.

This is not your daddy's western. If it weren't for the California gold rush setting and guns-for-hire subject matter, I wouldn't consider The Sisters Brothers a western at all. Take the same story and characters, update them into a present-day setting - or back to medieval China - and I think it would still work. That's because the brothers - especially, Eli - are so well written.

The Sisters brothers are Charles and Eli, two gunmen employed by the Commodore. The Commodore ha More...

(4.5) Quite enjoyable read...awesome cover too

I had read a bunch of novels/letters/narrative-within-novels and thought I had escaped that format before, but was just a tad disappointed when I found a diary in the narrative (not to mention two intermissions--?).

But these minor criticisms aside, this was a fantastic read. Perhaps not all readers will find these two professional killers the most likable murderers you're likely to meet? They live by their own moral code, and I guess are the good guy More...

It's going to be difficult to find a review, or maybe just to write one, without a slew of comparisons. deWitt's novel is not so much a classic western as a classic revisionist western, and--in tone, wandering plot, outsized eccentrics, casually-brutal violence, and essentially humanist foundations--it's in a league with the great Charles Portis' True Grit, with David Milch's much-missed series Deadwood, and the great Altman film McCabe and Mrs. Miller. While this (dull) repetition of comparison More...

I get the McCarthy comparisons, but this book has an additional (disturbing) Kill Bill element, with a totally unique narrator who makes the story his own. I guess the "cowboy noir" description is pretty apt. The Sisters Brothers are some badass fabled assassins, but Sister Brother #2 Eli is no hot and gritty cowboy (a la Daniel Craig); rather he is the pudgy sidekick with a conscience who lends his melancholy, earthy-poetic voice to the tale. The writing is terse, and the characters are compell More...

Wow--fun, fun read! The Sisters brothers are two guns-for-hire working in the Gold Rush Days of Oregon and California. Eli, the younger and more tenderhearted of the two, narrates the story of himself and his brother, Charlie. Charlie is the brains of the operation. Charlie makes most of the calls and is ruthless when it comes to tolerating others. But Charlie loves his liquor too much to keep the boys on schedule. The brothers have been hired to track down a mysterious gold prospector who holds More...

It seems Patrick deWitt has noted the similarity between the laconic nature of Western heroes and the understated style of dark, dry humour. The Sisters Brothers is a fairly violent tale of two killers who are also brothers, but the narrative voice, coming from the POV of Eli Sisters, does much to undercut the violence of it all. Actual violent acts are quite graphic, but they are described briefly and realistically, and not dwelt upon. More time is spent on dialogue with the odd characters that More...

Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers reads like a novel written by a guy under Faulker and Cormac McCarthy's influence but who dispenses, wisely, with 95% of the deep meaning and sticks with a solid, cinematic storyline instead. That's a good decision. Trust me.

The Sisters Brothers proceeds as if the book should have a whistle-heavy soundtrack for the inevitable film, with the lead roles played by up and coming actors of whom we haven't yet heard. Eli and Charlie Sisters, feared killers for hir More...

This is a helluva read, and Eli Sisters is as engaging a narrator as I've read since my brief Portis bender this summer.

I'm not sure how much is there if you go digging beneath the surface of this novel (which is to say: exactly why was it short-listed for the Man-Booker, and what might its selection tell us about the slow decline in shelf-cred of that award since the Man took it over?), but I'm not sure I care to pull it apart either. It will inevitably draw comparisons--McCarthy (an easy, slop More...

Have to be honest, this book (great premise) was so uneventful for me. Lacked tension, flat characters, some bright moments of sharp dialogue, but too brief to redeem it. Zero sense of place or time. A western?

Not at all what I expected, but I'm so unmoved that I don't even feel cheated. That some reviewers are making favourable Cormac McCarthy & Deadwood comparisons is the only thing about this that raises my pulse.

This book did not draw me in with the first paragraph. I was wary of the gold-rush-cowboy-vigilante-adventure trope. But if you give it a chance, you will gladly ride into the sunset with it.

The best part to me was the voice. The narrator--Eli Sisters, killer for hire--has a dispassionate, precise voice and I assume is meant to be somewhere on the autism spectrum. It reminded me a bit of the narrator of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. So he is a good chronicler and the details More...

I have never read a book about the Gold Rush in California before. It was a real page turner. The story is told by Eli a man who has a twin brother Charlie. They work for the Commodore as hit men. They were send to find a man called Warm but first they had to meet up with Morris who also worked for the Commodore as he would oranize things. It is a tale of the 2 brothers whose last name is Sisters (hence the title of the book). They go on an adventure from Oregon City to California and meeting al More...

A western, told from the POV of the "bad guys" that nonetheless makes them sympathetic characters. I loved the dead-pan delivery and the over-the-top oddball characters. Casual cruelty and low morals of course, but not as bloody/gross as it could have been. On an annoying technical note, however, it wasn't divided up into segments so I couldn't take the CDs out of my car and listen to it while I did chores

This fast-paced western follows the titular Sisters brothers -- two anti-hero gun thug killers -- on a series of adventures through the west coast frontier. While the language in the novel was clear and concise, the characters were complex and compelling -- especially the story's narrator, the conflicted Eli Sisters -- giving the book a kind of modern cinematic feel to it.

This is a deceptively simple book. The writing is simple, the chapters are short, on the surface of it the story itself is quite simple. But there are ideas here that run much deeper than what you see on the surface.

Charlie and Eli Sisters are killers, so famous that simply stating their names makes people shake with fear. Charlie is brash and ruthless. Eli, who narrates their tale, is introspective and soft hearted. He's been drawn into this life by his feelings of loyalty and protectiveness t More...

Hmmm- the anti-western?
Unpredictable and strange story of two hired guns set during the Gold Rush days. It is what lies beneath these psychopathic brothers that keeps you interested. SO GOOD.

Awesome cover.

I totally loved this. It is the story of two gunslinger, contract killer brothers, told from the perspective of the younger one, who is used to doing as his brother tells him, and who dreams of a better life, not as a killer. While this sounds extremely violent (yes, lots of bodies pile up) and dark, in fact it is engaging and the narrator brother, Eli, sympathetic and engaging. The Sisters brothers encounter a series of characters, unusual types and voices who make the brothers seem like the c More...