An earlier version of this review misstated the middle name of the author of another book, “Doc.” She is Mary Doria Russell. It also misspelled the last name of the late Western novelist Jack Schaefer. This version has been corrected.
Book review: Patrick deWitt’s ‘The Sisters Brothers’
Self-conscious about his weight, he’s adorably forlorn, lonely in a way that makes you ache for him. “I had never been with a woman for longer than a night,” he tells us, “and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness.”
DeWitt catches Eli’s patter just right, the odd formality and naked candor of a man who’s tired of killing, who longs for “a reliable companion.” He’s generous to ladies and kind to animals, nursing his pathetic horse, Tub, so long that his brother calls him “The Protector of Moronic Beasts.” And while Charles pursues all the usual vices, nothing gives Eli more pleasure than discovering the fine-smelling, tingling feeling of brushing his teeth. “It is highly refreshing to the mouth,” he tells anyone who will listen. (The toothbrush must have been the iPad of the mid-19th century. It plays a prized roll in Dorset’s “Doc,” too.)
More from Ron Charles
Ron came to The Post in 2005 from the Christian Science Monitor, where he was the Book Editor and lead critic. He lives in Bethesda with his wife, an English teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.
But when his temper is up, Eli warns us, “everything goes black and narrow.” That’s just a hint of his capacity for sudden violence, acts of fury that embarrass him in calmer moments of reflection.
His calculating brother makes a menacing foil. Coldhearted and sly, Charlie sleeps with his eyes open, except when he’s passed out drunk, which is far too often. He craves the excitement of confrontation and laughs when he blows men away. One of the most painful aspects of the novel is watching Eli thirst for his brother’s affection, even as Charlie treats him like a softhearted dimwit.
As the novel runs along, deWitt shifts the story in unpredictable directions, slowing the pace for a surreal finale in the woods that’s touched with alchemy. The black humor drops away entirely for what Eli calls in his earthy poetic voice, “a tangle of grotesqueness and failure.” After capturing the fireside camps and saloons in perfectly drawn vignettes, deWitt strips these two lethal brothers of more than they ever thought a man could lose. And then, damned if he doesn’t surprise us again with a twilight scene that’s just miraculously lovely.
Charles is The Post’s fiction editor. You can follow him on Twitter @RonCharles.
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