And then they ate biscuits...

My first thought of reading The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt evoked memories of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, which is about the only ongoing relationship I’ve had with the western genre, and it was a forced one being that it was the only thing on the four channels of TV I grew up with, that had a plot and showed Sunday evening. While I knew just from the title that the context of the book was likely to be very different than my childhood memories of westerns, I cannot say I was very excited or captivated by thought of reading a western book.


When I actually got into the reading I have to say the author does an excellent job of creating the “head space” of the main character. I like the internal dialogue and narration of the character. The story made me crave food cooked over an open fire, and it was a gem of a reading experience to see a cowboy struggle with weight loss with all the conviction, resolve and mentality of the average woman and experience pretty much the same issues and utter defeat in the challenge. Also had fun inserting gay cowboy subtext between Warm and Percy as I was reading but I’m not sure that was an enjoyment the author intended the reader to take away from the novel.

On the downside the plot did not grab me at all. The characters seems so real it was hard for even a fantasy lover like me to grasp the pseudoscience/alchemy chemical part of the plot, I was actually quite surprised when the substance turned out to be “real” in the book as I thought it was going to turn out to be a con. In the end we are left with a pretty typical bounty hunter plot line. Make money then lose money, end up broke. Joss Weedon’s Firefly show, Outlaw Star the Anime, Cowboy Beebop the Anime all have the exact same concept, while being unoriginal isn’t the worst crime in writing (after all I love a basic clear cut good vs evil good for the win plot over and over again personally), but I guess given the clear skill of the writing in this book I was expecting more originality in the plot. It wasn’t bad it just didn’t grip me. It was typical.

Did the characters really change in the end? I don’t think so, so much as the world they occupy changed. Eli speaks toward the end of the novel about a change in how he and his brother conversed after their last adventure, how they were never quite as open with each other after their bounty hunting days (did I mention the foreshadowing in this book totally wrecks the suspense.) it shows more a change in social expectations I think rather than actual change in character.

When I was in the closet and to an extent still when I am around my parents, family and anywhere else that seems to be required a level of blending in with the norm, while it may be perfectly all right during a football game for my mother and sister to make causal comments about the football players butts, it would come off as pretty awkward if I made comments about the cheerleaders. However when I am with a group of lesbians then it’s pretty abnormal not to comment. Likewise I think the characters in the novel would find themselves out of context of their new life back with mommy dearest if they were running around trying to drown and shoot people in the head.  I think at least for Eli he pretty much got tired of being something that wasn’t his natural state, like I got tired of “being straight” and he just up and went home. I just up and came out the closet, it’s not a change so much as a survival of what you are not.

Charlie on the other hand may have changed more as a character if we decide to infer that he goes on living a non-violent life and dials back the substance abuse. That being said with the loss of his hand in real life I wouldn’t bet on someone with I fondness for morphine and alcohol to turn their life around after the loss of his hand, even Elie as much as admits in the novel Charlie was at his most magnificent as a killer. He has yet to survive being something he is not, sadly (although seriously if you're a killer I have a hard time feeling sad about it) he doesn't have much of an option being that he lost his hand.

To sum it up the Sisters Brothers,  is a character driven literary western that hosts a standard bounty hunter plot line.