Wednesday, November 5, 2014

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt




First impression

I got this book for Christmas in 2013 and for some reason or another I didn't get to it until now (Oct 2014). To clarify, I got the book because I asked for it and I was really looking forward to reading it, since I've heard wonderful things about it. As it turns out, it was not my cup of tea. It is the first Western, or Western-like book that I've ever read and I guess it is just not my genre. The writing was witty and it made me laugh a couple of times, but the story itself never got to me in the way I thought it would based on the reviews

Final thoughts

The book was entertaining but I never engaged with any of the characters. More often that I would like to admit I found myself forgetting who was who, and there aren’t even that many characters in the story.

Charlie and Elie Sisters work for the Commodore and their job is fairly simple: to dispose (a.k.a kill) of people who get in his way during the Gold Rush. This time they are ordered to Herman Kermit Warm, only with the knowledge that he took something that didn’t belong to him. They set on their quest, moving across Oregon all the way to San Francisco, dealing with the inclement weather, the dessert, a bad tooth and each other.

Something that I found extremely amusing was the whole ordeal with tooth paste; it was a perfect example of the type of humour the book has. Is just that the funny parts were not enough for me to get grabbed into the story.

The writing was flawless; the description and construction of setting was spot on. But the characters…and is not a “they are not likeable” complaint. They are not, but they are not meant to be. I do not think that characters have to always be likeable; but I do think they have to be engaging, make you want to know what is going with them.

This book was not for me at the end. But I am not the Western type, even in movies. I like Blazing Saddles, but that is the extent of it. If you do enjoy this type of genre, I would say go for it!


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