The Sisters Brothers

Patrick de Witt's The Sisters Brothers

Basically we liked this book. The Sisters Brothers is a Western, set in the 1850s during the San Francisco gold rush. It highlights the lawlessness and precariousness of travellers and prospectors in the new territories at this time. Spoken in the first person by Eli, he and his brother Charlie, both hired killers, are on a mission to find, torture and kill Hermann Warm; torture him to discover his chemical secret of extracting gold from earth.


Eli narrates with a homespun philosophy, explaining/justifying their lives. As their travels progress, their story is punctuated with bouts of extreme violence, as well as surreal sequences such as the description of San Francisco, the recurring crying man and a witch (they are surprisingly superstitious). The story does not end happily, and they end, chastened, going back to mother.

In all we thought they were psychopaths, Eli killing with uncontrollable anger and Charlie with some cold steel calculation, there was no emotional pathos here. But basically they were quite stupid and eventually get their comeuppance. But the book was really about violence and the greed for money, and the unfairness of society where there is no established justice system; everyone is out for themselves, and if you are not strong enough you fall by the wayside. Even these two feared gangsters become vulnerable.

De Witt writes fluently and with humour. This is of the dark variety, De Witt has the knack of turning a solemn sequence on it’s head in the space of a sentence, and changes the mood altogether. The English is refreshingly un-American (De Witt was born in Canada) and it makes for an easy read. It was also the only book we’ve read so far where comments were made about the design, the font, kerning and leading being finely done. We liked the cover design, as well as the unusual section dividers - smoking guns illustrated in black and white.