The Sisters Brothers [Hardcover]

[Patrick] DeWitt has produced a genre-bending frontier saga that is exciting, funny, and perhaps unexpectedly, moving. (Publishers Weekly 2011-01-10)

. . . a lushly voiced picaresque story . . . It's a kind of True Grit told by Tom Waits. (Tom Chiarella Esquire 2011-05-01)

. . . smooth and seamless, shot through with dark humor . . . as easy to slip into as the old HBO series 'Deadwood.' (Carolyn Kellogg LA Times 2011-05-01)

I doubt very much I'll read a funnier, more original book than this picaresque, Wild West tale . . . a terrifically spun yarn . . . masterfully strange and wonderful . . . (Emily Donaldson Toronto Star 2011-05-08)

. . . cinematic, wry and mannered . . . DeWitt['s] ability to distill an image with a couple of well-chosen words and the precision and intensity of his language gives [The] Sisters [Brothers] a dreamlike aura. (Justin Bauer Philadelphia City Paper 2011-05-05)

. . . imaginative and ebullient . . . revels in the hilarious life and times of two gunslingers, Eli and Charlie Sisters. (Caroline Leavitt Boston Globe 2011-05-08)

. . . gory, mesmerizing . . . carries a strong echo of Pulp Fiction . . . seduces us to its characters, and draws us on the strength of deWitt's subtle, nothing-wasted prose. (Karen R. Long Cleveland Plain Dealer 2011-05-08)

. . . a witty noir version of Don Quixote . . . hugely entertaining. (Stella Tillyard Financial Times 2011-05-13)

Violent, funny and strangely touching, [The Sisters Brothers is] destined for a spot on many best-of-2011 lists. (Richard Helm Edmonton Journal 2011-05-14)

. . . [an] unsettling, compelling and deeply strange picaresque novel. (Jake Wallis Simons Independent 2011-05-15)

. . . spirited and often humorous . . . Patrick deWitt's picaresque narrative works with a wink and a nod of reverence, squaring with recent revivals of the Western in popular culture, namely HBO's Deadwood. (J. David Santen Jr. Oregonian 2011-05-14)

The Sisters Brothers has a cadence and flow to its prose and the reader can almost hear Eli's laconic narration as the pages turn . . . here is a hardcover that practically holds a Colt to your head and growls: read me. (Chadwick Ginther Winnipeg Review 2011-05-11)

The Sisters Brothers is a bloody, nightmarish frontier road trip that seems at times like something out of Cormac McCarthy, yet somehow merges laughter and hope with suffering, death and betrayal. [...] Like an alchemist, deWitt has refined and purified the base metals of black comedy and the western to produce literary gold. (Bob Armstrong Winnipeg Free Press 2011-05-14)

DeWitt has invigorated [the] well-worn path [of the classic Western] with wit, style, and imagination. (Jenny Shank New West 2011-05-16)

. . . wryly comic, heartbreakingly sentimental, and immensely likable . . . (Georgia Straight 2011-05-17)

. . . edgy and unyielding . . . The Sisters Brothers gives readers a sense of adventure without ever having to stare down the barrel of a gun. (Kacy Muir Weekender 2011-05-18)

There is something irresistibly cinematic about this quirky tale, a Coen brothers-style strangeness that paradoxically celebrates an unlikely humanity. (Margaret Gunning Edmonton Journal 2011-05-21)

So subtle is deWitt's prose, so slyly note-perfect his rendition of Eli's voice in all its earnestly charming 19th-century syntax, and so compulsively readable his bleakly funny western noir story, that readers will stick by Eli even as he grinds his heel into the shattered skull of an already dead prospector. (Brian Bethune Maclean's 2011-05-19)

. . . original, entrancing and entertaining . . . (Robin Vidimos Denver Post 2011-05-22)

In The Sisters Brothers, a diabolical combination of Laurel and Hardy and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (with a touch of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, just to emphasise the high literary stakes) deWitt has ensured another unforgettable pair their place in fictive lore. (Catherine Taylor Telegraph 2011-05-20)

[Patrick deWitt] frequently crosses into comic territory to produce a story that's weirdly funny, startlingly violent and steeped in sadness. (Ron Charles Washington Post 2011-05-24)

. . . darkly hilarious . . . riveting . . . deWitt welcomingly reimagines the [Western] genre. (Joel Aurora ZYZZYVA 2011-05-12)

Wandering his Western landscape with the cool confidence of a practiced pistoleer, deWitt's steady hand belies a hair trigger, a poet's heart and an acute sense of gallows humor . . . It's easy to imagine John C. Reilly - who is set to star in the film version of the book - lumbering through this breezy, pitch-black comedy's cinematic scenes. (Matthew Love Time Out New York 2011-05-18)

. . . fresh, hilariously anti-heroic, often genuinely chilling, and relentlessly compelling. Yes, this is a mighty fine read, and deWitt a mighty fine writer. (Michael Christie National Post 2011-05-26)

. . . hilarious, dark, twisted and compelling. (Dina Del Bucchia Canada Arts Connect Magazine 2011-06-10)

Bursting with vitality and driven along by a terrific pulpy energy, The Sisters Brothers is the kind of book you may well end up wholeheartedly recommending to friends. (Alastair Mabbott Herald Scotland 2011-06-06)

The Sisters Brothers is a bold, original and powerfully compelling work, grounded in well-drawn characters and a firm hold on narrative. When they say “They don’t write em like that anymore,” they’re wrong. (Robert Wiersema Globe and Mail 2011-06-24)

. . . comic . . . engaging . . . the brothers' poetic banter and the book’s bracing bursts of violence keep this campfire yarn pulled taut. (Christian Williams Onion AV Club 2011-06-23)

. . . a book that’s both a heck of a lot of fun to read and surprisingly compelling when it ends -- one that both your hipster brother and your straight-arrow dad will get a kick out of. (Rob Thomas Wisconsin Capital-Times 2011-06-30)

Patrick deWitt has written an Old West tale that conjures up the colourful images of a spaghetti western filled with stark realism, eccentric characters and black humour . . . If you’re looking for an unforgettable western, grab this one. (Judee Fong Monday Magazine 2011-07-06)

America seems anything but beautiful in Patrick DeWitt’s quirky and ultimately touching new novel The Sisters Brothers. (Steven Whitton Anniston Star 2011-07-08)

[Patrick deWitt] has taken the typical saga and, with laser-sharp prose, masterful storytelling, and an eccentrically perfect combination of humor, violence, lust, and pathos, has turned it completely upside-down. Never has the Old West seemed so simultaneously and page-turningly beautiful, tragic, and comedic, or a cowboy so delightfully neurotic. (Kathleen Brazie Charlotte Viewpoint 2011-07-06)

. . . gritty . . . deadpan . . . very comedic . . . opens new doors in the imagination. (John Vernon New York Times Book Review 2011-07-24)

Fully invested, DeWitt is a hilarious, wry wordsmith and a masterful storyteller. The Sisters Brothers, with its sharp edges and instinctive compassion, is far from historical displacement or genre escapism. It is art worthy of the status, regardless of context or -ism. (Katia Grubisic Rover Arts 2011-07-24)

. . . a darkly comic, compelling and surprising story . . . I doubt I'll find a more entertaining and thoughtful novel this year. (Quentin Mills-Fenn Uptown Winnipeg 2011-08-25)

DeWitt’s inspired, many-layered yarn is as entertaining and as stylistically accomplished as it is unsettling and most original in its revisiting of what remains a glorious genre. (Eileen Battersby Irish Times 2011-09-17)

... sheer brilliance ... (Laurie Grassi Chatelaine 2011-10-30)

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living–and whom he does it for.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters–losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life–and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.