The Sisters Brothers - Outside of a Dog

Hardcover, 328 pages

English language

Published July 14, 2011 by Ecco.

ISBN:: 9780062041265
OCLC Number:: 704395448

(1 review)

The Sisters Brothers is a 2011 Western novel by Canadian-born author Patrick deWitt. The darkly comic story takes place in Oregon and California in 1851. The narrator, Eli Sisters, and his brother Charlie are assassins tasked with killing Hermann Kermit Warm, an ingenious prospector who has been accused of stealing from the Sisters' fearsome boss, the Commodore. Eli and Charlie experience a series of misadventures while tracking down Warm which resemble the narrative form of a picaresque novel, and the chapters are, according to one review, "slightly sketched-in, dangerously close to a film treatment."The film rights for the novel were sold to actor John C. Reilly's production company and adapted into a 2018 film of the same name, with Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix playing Eli and Charlie, respectively.

2 editions

Jon Nixon reviewed The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

Review of 'The Sisters Brothers' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Hired killers, Charlie and Eli Sisters travel from Oregon City to San Francisco to murder Herman Warm. On the way, one of them starts to question their line of business. The first half of the book is a surreal, dream-like ramble through an Old West populated with bizarre and wonderful characters. The second half gets a bit more plot bound and moves from comedy to tragedy via a parade of grisly deaths. The whole thing is very readable, funny, sad and strangely beautiful. Definitely worth reading.