‘We are the opposite of lawmen.’ (Kindle Loc. 1423)

The second read in our 2019 Siblings’ Book Club following The Long Walk was this somewhat recent western novel, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt. It’s an anti-hero story with a wretched couple of dudes as protagonists, so I find it hard to talk about whether or not I “liked” or “really enjoyed” this book. Many of the scenes were dirty or otherwise sub-human, and I found myself hoping the brothers would kill a character here and there, which is never a good thing—even if said character deserved it.

With that introduction out of the way, I must say, I liked and really enjoyed this book. In fact, most of us did.

While my family didn’t discuss this book nearly as much as we did The Long Walk, what we did share centered mainly on whether or not this book is in fact an allegory of some sort or, more likely, a re-writing of some famous tale. Especially in the beginning where in each chapter we meet some new, crazily unique character like “the weeping man”, the dentist, or the lonely witch, it feels like we’re riding along with Dewitt and retracing something like Greek mythology on horseback. One Club member likened it to watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which is itself a retelling of The Odyssey) or even Pilgrim’s Progress. We have no proof, and none of us took the effort to research our assumptions, but we’re sticking to them. Dewitt had something specific in mind when he wrote this tale. We’re sure of it.

My own brother (not a killer himself) especially enjoyed the first-person perspective, summarizing it as a “good story of brotherhood and the ties that bond people together, despite major differences in character.” A few of our collected favorite lines from the book were these:

• “We can all of us be hurt, and no one is exclusively safe from worry and sadness.” (Loc. 520)
  
• In speaking of a horse entering and subsequently collapsing a tent: “Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.“
  
• “I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. He had the type of face that invited violence.” (Loc. 1130)
  
• “I might as well have married an alligator, for all the kindness Eunice showed me. She had no grace or charm whatsoever. She had noncharm, or anticharm. A bottomless well of antagonism and hostility. And she was terrifically ugly. And she smelled like rotten leaves. A brute, to put it briefly.” (Loc. 2831)

John C. Reilly turned this book into a film alongside Joaquin Phoenix, and I was really looking forward to watching it, especially to seeing “the formula” in action. Spoiler alert: the movie is nothing like the book, in my opinion. While all of the names were the same, and while the general gist of “travel to kill Warm and steal his formula” was there, the theater of my mind was a thousand times better than this poorly-rendered film. One look at “Mayfield”, and I hope every reader-watcher agrees with me. So John C. Reilly remains on “my least-favorite celebrities” short-list.

Despite the atrocious behavior of virtually all the characters throughout the story, the main character Eli’s generosity was commendable, and the fact that all he really wanted to do was to settle back down with Mother deepens the soft-spot he showed throughout his narration. I’m glad that, in the end, he and Charlie found time to rest, and I hope none of The Commodore’s faithful sought them out for “questioning”. That Eli penned the book suggests, I suppose, that he got away with that final job. And good for them, I suppose. While losing all their monies seems light retribution for the all the lives they took, I’ve got to just settle on the fact that it’s fiction, and their happily-ever-after ending was nice to see. I hate investing so many hours in a story just to watch the lead character die, even if as an anti-hero he deserves it.

©2019 E.T.