Fandom/Canon Name: The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt
What's awesome about it: It's a black comedy about cowboy. hitmen.
Or, if you want more to go on than just that (in which case you're more discerning than I): it's a super entertaining quick read of a novel about a pair of brothers who are assassins for a crimelord in the Wild West of Oregon & California in the late 19th century. Eli, the POV character, is increasingly dissatisfied with their arrangement and wants to leave the killing business. Charlie, his older brother, does not. The novel is mostly comprised of short and often inexplicable episodes that transpire as they track down their most recent target, an idealistic inventor named Hermann Kermit Warm.
There is a Lot of shipping potential if you like fraught sibling incest. Even if you don't, it's full of eccentric characters and there's so much potential here for maudlin gen "casefic" (with cases being... murders). Eli is one of my favourite narrators I've come across in ages: so thoughtful! So deadpan! !o casually violent! Really, who can pass up an overtly anachronistic neo-Western with a Coen Brothers vibe and some magical realist elements? Again, not I.
It's also being made into a 2018 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix, and Riz Ahmed, so... get in on the canon while the getting's good, I guess?
Where to find: Libraries + anywhere else you can buy books! It was nominated for a Man Booker so it should be relatively easy to find.
The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt
What's awesome about it: It's a black comedy about cowboy. hitmen.
Or, if you want more to go on than just that (in which case you're more discerning than I): it's a super entertaining quick read of a novel about a pair of brothers who are assassins for a crimelord in the Wild West of Oregon & California in the late 19th century. Eli, the POV character, is increasingly dissatisfied with their arrangement and wants to leave the killing business. Charlie, his older brother, does not. The novel is mostly comprised of short and often inexplicable episodes that transpire as they track down their most recent target, an idealistic inventor named Hermann Kermit Warm.
There is a Lot of shipping potential if you like fraught sibling incest. Even if you don't, it's full of eccentric characters and there's so much potential here for maudlin gen "casefic" (with cases being... murders). Eli is one of my favourite narrators I've come across in ages: so thoughtful! So deadpan! !o casually violent! Really, who can pass up an overtly anachronistic neo-Western with a Coen Brothers vibe and some magical realist elements? Again, not I.
It's also being made into a 2018 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Joaquin Phoenix, and Riz Ahmed, so... get in on the canon while the getting's good, I guess?
Where to find: Libraries + anywhere else you can buy books! It was nominated for a Man Booker so it should be relatively easy to find.