Found out about this because it was on the Booker short list. I wanted something a bit different from 1850s Britain so jumped across to the 1850s in the USA.
Even though I read the kindle version I still like the cover, so here it is. Books on the kindle are a really pared down experience because all the external factors are gone; bending the spine, losing your bookmark,the smell of old pages and the worst sin of all, looking ahead and reading the last few pages. But I still love my kindle, I can actually read and concentrate for longer on it with fewer distractions and sharper print.
Right, about the book. It's been a while since I finished it but I really enjoyed it. I felt like I was reading a film. I don't know if this is a new genre which has arisen lately but it happened in a more simplisitic way when I read 'The Help' . It's really like you are just reading a book which has been written for the movies. I can see how the Coen Brothers are going to just take it and make it their own.
It was clever, hard hitting, sad and extremely darkly comic. Charlie and Eli Sisters were two hit men brothers for hire travelling across the Wild West to California with the orders to kill a man -Herman Kermit Warm (what a name!) Everyday was full of mad adventures and characters were just left and story-lines unfinished as the brothers moved across America to find the guy they needed to kill.
The book was totally lacking sentimentality.The characters were so well written it was like you could smell there gangranous wounds, bad breath and greasy hair. I loved the section on Eli's festering tooth ache and how his jaw swelled up so much his brother could see it even when he was riding far behind him.
Eli is the narrator of the book and the less psychopathic of the two brothers. You get so engrossed in his world it's like you have been privileged, as a reader, to enter his inner thoughts and nothing he does can shock you.I loved Eli's compassion for his old horse and how he would do anything for him, but also he's prone to mad rages where nobody's life is spared.
The Don Quioxte travelling across the Sates was my favourite two thirds of the book. I wish the whole book had been one long journey but no, they finally reach San Francisco at the height of the Gold Rush.
Once Hermit Kermit Warm arrived on the scene, even though he's an extremely colourful character, the tone of the book changed ( I think I missed the witty banter between the brothers as they race through the townships leaving trouble behind them.)
There are a couple of naff plot devices which lead them to H K Warm and suddenly the book changes It becomes really sad and not darkly comic anymore, just dark and sad. I wish the last third of the book hadn't happened and that my memories could be of the Sisters Brothers just charging across America on their steads with total abandonment.
Posted on 06.02.2012 on posterous.com
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