Castlebar Book Club
The Book Club meets once a month (usually the second Tuesday of the month) in Castlebar Library at 8.00pm. Check events page for next meeting or check out the club's Previous Book Club selections
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he might have concocted a story like Patrick deWitt's bloody, darkly funny western The Sisters Brothers. It's 1851, and Eli and Charlie Sisters make their way from Oregon to California to kill a man. Eli, the larger one, tells the story, which opens with him thinking a lot about horses and not quite realizing that his brother and their boss, known as the Commodore, are shorting him.If Eli is a little slow, he's also coming awake — compassion is unfolding in him, and he's considering the possibility of a new life. As the book follows the Sisters brothers on their quest to assassinate one Hermann Kermit Warm, it also tracks Eli's change. He starts out a brute who goes blank with murderous rage and soon becomes an equally brutish man pleased by the minty taste of the toothpowder a dentist gives him. Just how civilized will he become?The Sisters Brothers frontier is more poetic than realistic but as easy to slip into as the old HBO series Deadwood. But where an onscreen western shows the setting, this book has few descriptions of landscape or buildings they visit. What gets described, instead, are bodily woes. Charlie's bad drunks and worse hangovers include lots of vomiting, Eli has injuries that bleed and swell, and the decline of Tub, Eli's horse, after getting swatted by a grizzly is, in the end, grisly.
The L.A. Times
Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad. Told in deWitt's darkly comic and arresting style, The Sisters Brothers is the kind of Western the Coen Brothers might write - stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel Ablutions, The Sisters Brothers is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work. It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction, which shows an exciting expansion of Dewitt's range.
Amazon.co.uk
Triumphantly dark ... The writing is superb ... deWitt has ensured another unforgettable pair their place in fictive lore.Sunday TelegraphA blackly comic witty noir version of Don Quixote. DeWitt's story is hugely entertaining.Financial TimesOften blackly hilarious.The TimesAn unsettling, compelling and deeply strange picaresque novel ... it has much to say about the business of being human.Independent on SundayA stunningly accomplished book. With this novel, deWitt proves that he is well on the way to greatness.Dazed & ConfusedThe Sisters Brothers confirms DeWitt as one of the most talented young writers around.Sunday TimesA powerfully realized work of narrative fiction ... the dialogue is sharp as a whip.
Times Literary Supplement
A boldly eloquent adventure story full of sweat and casual violence about a man trying to live a better life
Metro
Bursting with vitality and driven along by a terrific pulpy energy.
The Herald
DeWitt never misses a beat in what is a masterclass on the twists of the mind and heart.
Scotsman
About the Author
Patrick deWitt's Ablutions was a huge critical success. He lives with his wife and son in Portland, Oregon.
Reader Resources:
Dedicated to book clubs, ReadersPlace.co.uk (Random House) is a website where reading groups can find inspiration, have their say on books, and connect with other book clubs and authors.
- CompletelyNovel.com links readers as well as new writers, offering a one-stop author-reader experience.
- Reader's Review site with active discussion board
- Book Group Links:A selection of sites compiled by the Salt Lake City Library.
- Great Books Foundation: The grandfather of them all
- Reading Group Choices Online: Over 550 guides from publishers. 150 can be printed from the site
- Reading Group Guides:A very useful selection of reading group guides from Random House Publishers
- Writer's Resourcesite for writers of all abilities
- Reader's Area of this site