The Sisters Brothers

I have to confess, I do sometimes judge a book by its cover. I'm not a Western reader; this is a first for me and it was the cover that attracted me. It's a really cool image. The inside pages also have a striking graphic style, so that was really fun.

Fortunately the content lived up to the appearance. This was an offbeat, dark comedy, a Tarantino-style western. Two brothers, who are killers for hire. We see the story through the younger brother, Eli, who is full of conflicts: sympathetic, romantic, violent, bad-tempered, immature, thoughtful, and impulsive. Eli has a lot of doubts about their line of work. He and his brother Charlie are familiar but not close, and Charlie is as much of an antagonist to Eli as he is an ally.

The story has a lot of humor and many twists and turns with an unexpected but satisfying ending. I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed it, in fact this was one of my best surprises of the year. This is not my usual genre of choice, but a good story is a good story.