The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick DeWitt was an odd little book (as well as seeming an odd nominee for the Mann Booker prize).  A western with touches of magic realism (and maybe science fiction), the novel also has a stylized narrative style that would stand out in any book, let alone an amalgamation like this one.

The title already tells us that we're in for something a bit different -- the oxymoronic mixing of Sisters Brothers promises strange alchemies in the course of the novel.  And so we have the brothers themselves, one pretty clearly a psychopath, the other gentler (but when it comes right down to it, is he any better?  He certainly aids and abets his crazier brother).  We have the genius scientist who finds a better way to find gold, but poisons the landscape and himself in the process (I think the beavers that are destroyed as the result of his process help humanize a metaphor that's otherwise too stark).  We have the weird witch who lays a curse on the brothers.

DeWitt has a flair for set pieces.  Some are funny (the bit where Eli tries to order vegetables in a restaurant was hilarious), some are frightening (the witch), some are sad (the beavers).  Eli's narrative style, deadpan and serious, makes the funny moments funnier.  At the same time, the funny episodes and the more serious ones get the same narrative style, and so DeWitt can switch back & forth rapidly, which is great -- you never quite know how any of the events will play out.  Events which start out ludicrously can turn out to be quite moving.

My one issue with the novel is that it feels a bit schematic in the long ending section.  The two brothers ascend to the top of the world, so to speak, and then tumble down through each location they visited earlier in the novel in reverse order.  I know that there's a venerable tradition for this sort of journey in literature (the obvious one that comes to mind is A Clockwork Orange), but I don't think there's a way for it to avoid feeling mechanical, and that's a pity for a novel that had mostly felt very fresh until that point.