Shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, deWitt's dazzlingly original second novel is a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother.
Patrick deWitt is the author of the critically acclaimed Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers, which won the 2011 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards. Born in British Columbia, he has also lived in California, Washington and Oregon, where he currently resides with his wife and son.
Blackly hilarious
*The Times*
Confirms deWitt as one of the most talented young writers
around
*Sunday Times*
A witty noir version of Don Quixote... a blackly comic fable about
the usual wild west themes: emptiness, loneliness and the hollow
lure of gold
*Financial Times*
Unsettling, compelling and deeply strange... this book explores a
world in which civilisation, as we know it, has not yet emerged. It
has much to say about the business of being human
*Independent on Sunday*
So good, so funny and so sad
*Irish Times*
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... [DeWitt has] a skillfully polished voice and a
penchant for gleefully looking under bloody bandages. [It's] smooth
and seamless, shot through with dark humor, pared and antique
without being Baroque.
*Los Angeles Times*
A boldly eloquent adventure and a novel about a man trying to live
a better life
*Metro*
A masterclass on the twists of the mind and heart
*Scotsman*
A rip-roaring romp around the Wild West... deWitt is a proper
American novelist who is well on the way to greatness
*Dazed & Confused*
The sharpest novel published this year was The Sisters Brothers by
Patrick DeWitt. Like Flannery O'Connor shot through with the Coen
brothers, it was a tonic dash of the cowboy surreal and I loved
it.
*Andrew O’Hagan*
Few narrators this year have been funnier than Eli, one half of
Patrick deWitt's eponymous duo The Sisters Brothers. His drawling,
dark, laconic and heartbreaking voice turns a wry Western into a
work of great strangeness and verve
*Daily Telegraph*
Bold and beautifully simple ... it is intermittently moving,
consistently very funny, and above all, original
*New Statesman*
A western that reads like Cormac McCarthy with a better sense of
humour
*Sunday Express*
A stylistically impressive, darkly comic reworking of the
traditional western in Patrick deWitt's Booker-shortlisted story of
money revenge and morality
*Metro*
The adventure is narrated in deadpan style by Eli, who is
frequently driven to despair by the activities of his elder brother
... Eli emerges as a complex figure; a good man driven to do bad
things. And you know you're absorbed in a true western when you
find yourself shedding a tear at the death of his horse'
*Guardian*
This tale of mercenary brothers is often touching, as the gentler
of the two men, Eli Sisters, is really searching for love. DeWitt
slow his narrative down stylistically but gives his dubious
protagonists an engaging enough picaresque journey
*Sunday Herald*
This Booker-shortlisted novel is a playful often surreal take on
the classic western, following two homicidal brothers as they hunt
for a man named Hermann during the 1850s gold rush
*Week*
One of the finest novels I've read in ages and paints the colours
of the Wild West as beautifully as a Sergio Leone film
*Bury Free Press & Haverhill Echo*
It's fantastic, you must read it ... it's one of those books that
just grabs you, its so beautiful and funny and spare
*ITV 1’s Loose Women*
I read this after being shortlisted along with Patrick for the Man
Booker prize, and for my money it would have been a worthy winner
... this story of a pair of sibling killers chasing down their fate
crackles with dry wit, its brutal violence studded with moments of
heartbreaking humanity. In Eli Sisters, DeWitt creates a narrator
who lives and breathes; a monster with whom the reader sympathises,
a lost soul searching for virtue in the compassionless world of
gold rushes and gunfights. A wise, funny, startling book about
dreams both noble and ragged, and of the lengths we'll go to fulfil
them
*Untitled Books*
We all loved this book...one of the best books ever on the
bookclub.
*TV Book Club*
An enjoyable read, and its overall strangeness seems to tease the
reader into seeking deeper meanings
*The Times*
deWitt's inspired, many-layered yarn about loneliness, friendship
and love is as entertaining and as stylistically accomplished as it
is deeply moving
*Irish Times*
Patrick deWitt's superb second novel was deservedly shortlisted for
last year's Man Booker prize. It's highly original and darkly
comic, and has the offbeat quality of a Coen brothers film
*Mail on Sunday*
One of the most extraordinary books I've ever read
*Stylist*
Gripping and darkly humorous, the deadpan writing style is a joy
and the is sharp
*Crack*
A grippingly propulsive yarn set in the gold-rush era of the
American West and flecked through with dark humour
*Sunday Business Post*
deWitt's playful, almost surreal take on the classic western
follows two violent brothers as they wreak havoc during the 1850s
goldrush
*Sunday Times*
A rip-roaring, gun-slinging gallop through 19th Century America ...
Warm, darkly comic and thrillingly adventurous, you won't be able
to put this down
*Sara Montgomery, head of Guardian Books*
The language is extraordinarily good, very funny and eloquent
*Daily Express*
This novel is about two killer hitmen who you actually find
yourself falling in love with
*No. 1 Magazine*
An unexpected pleasure... It has the stripped power of a fable, yet
derives its persuasiveness from the voice of the narrator
*Spectator*
I loved it so much, I read it twice! It's funny as well as
poignant. It's so beautiful and fascinating. I adored it
*Yours*
[It] has a lovely fragility and an emotional core that rises above
its clever premise and style
*New York Times*
A superb Western mixed with profound life lessons
*Waitrose Weekend*
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