David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "hired-guns"
The Sisters Brothers
The Sisters brothers, Eli and Charlie, are hired guns, working for a crime boss named the Commodore during the California gold rush. They have been assigned the job of murdering Hermann Kermit Warm who has a formula that causes gold to rise from the bottom of a body of water to the top.
Eli and Charlie have a number of adventures before they can get to California, one of them involving a prospector who has struck it rich and Is spending his money as fast as he made it. Eli and Charlie end up with his gold, which they hide under a pot bellied stove in the basement of the prospector's hotel and there's a gun fight during which they cheat.
The Sisters have a Commodore contact in California names Morris, but by the time they get there, Morris has joined forces with Warm who had shown Morris his formula worked; they are now in the process of experimenting it on a larger body of water, a Beaver pond.
The problem is that Warm used some kind of acid in the formula and both Warm and Martin now have blisters on there feet and legs. This causes a bit of a problem for the reader in respect to suspension of disbelief. One of them falls in, and the other, who's supposed to be a brilliant inventor, jumps in after him to save him. Meanwhile the Sisters have met up with Warm and Morris and are helping them gather the gold; the formula actually works! But, being a little brighter, they prepare soap and water, to wash their legs and feet after they're finished collecting the gold.
One more thing: Charlie seems to be a sociopath, but the narrator, Eli, has a number of qualms about shooting people. Charlie gets greedy when pouring the formula into the Beaver pond, losing a hand in the process. We're supposed to believe that this changed Charlie's personality.
It's rather hard to believe that THE SISTERS BROTHERS was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize as there are no real twists in the novel, and the ending seems to be a bit too good to be true, considering who we're talking about here. I don't mean to say there's no comeuppance involved but it's purely monetary, and Eli doesn't even seem to care.
Eli and Charlie have a number of adventures before they can get to California, one of them involving a prospector who has struck it rich and Is spending his money as fast as he made it. Eli and Charlie end up with his gold, which they hide under a pot bellied stove in the basement of the prospector's hotel and there's a gun fight during which they cheat.
The Sisters have a Commodore contact in California names Morris, but by the time they get there, Morris has joined forces with Warm who had shown Morris his formula worked; they are now in the process of experimenting it on a larger body of water, a Beaver pond.
The problem is that Warm used some kind of acid in the formula and both Warm and Martin now have blisters on there feet and legs. This causes a bit of a problem for the reader in respect to suspension of disbelief. One of them falls in, and the other, who's supposed to be a brilliant inventor, jumps in after him to save him. Meanwhile the Sisters have met up with Warm and Morris and are helping them gather the gold; the formula actually works! But, being a little brighter, they prepare soap and water, to wash their legs and feet after they're finished collecting the gold.
One more thing: Charlie seems to be a sociopath, but the narrator, Eli, has a number of qualms about shooting people. Charlie gets greedy when pouring the formula into the Beaver pond, losing a hand in the process. We're supposed to believe that this changed Charlie's personality.
It's rather hard to believe that THE SISTERS BROTHERS was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize as there are no real twists in the novel, and the ending seems to be a bit too good to be true, considering who we're talking about here. I don't mean to say there's no comeuppance involved but it's purely monetary, and Eli doesn't even seem to care.
