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Cargando... hermanos Sisters, Lospor Patrick deWitt
  
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 Txikito | Jul 7, 2013 | 
 Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage,and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark; passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves. You aren't a passenger, you don't care about that destination, and the whole train rumbles on without you.  Much has been made, over the last few decades, about the death of the western as a genre. All this talk, however, seems to overlook a single, crucial point: the western was never just a genre....DeWitt not only plays the western straight, he draws from the best. Written with the parsed force of the best of Elmore Leonard, DeWitt’s closest CanLit antecedent seems to be Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. The influence comes through not only in his attention to every word, every detail, but also in the deadpan, unflinching depiction of violence, reality elevated almost to the level of ridiculousness...Despite being deliberately and effectively part of a tradition (one can imagine it being written and read a hundred years ago, with a few caveats), The Sisters Brothers is a bold, original and powerfully compelling work, grounded in well-drawn characters and a firm hold on narrative. When they say “They don’t write em like that anymore,” they’re wrong. Because rather than concerning himself with showboating his period-specific research, deWitt has deliberately flouted the rules of straight-laced historical realism here, to stunning effect. And most importantly, what he does get right are the flawed and jagged hearts of his characters, which is all the real this reviewer needs....What Western is real anyway? Aren’t they all revisions and stylizations of the past? From the kindergarten morals and the ridiculous bloodlessness of Hollywood Westerns, to Louis L’Amour’s pat Harlequin Romances for men, to the populist machismo of spaghetti Westerns and their impossibly slow gun duels, the genre has never registered very high on the reality scale.....The overall effect is fresh, hilariously anti-heroic, often genuinely chilling, and relentlessly compelling. Yes, this is a mighty fine read, and deWitt a mighty fine writer. There never was a more engaging pair of psychopaths than Charlie and Eli Sisters, two brothers who kill for hire—and for necessity, and sometimes for the pure, amusing hell of it....So subtle is DeWitt’s prose, so slyly note-perfect his rendition of Eli’s voice in all its earnestly charming 19th-century syntax, and so compulsively readable his bleakly funny western noir story, that readers will stick by Eli even as he grinds his heel into the shattered skull of an already dead prospector. Nothing in Patrick deWitt’s first novel, Ablutions, a laconic barfly’s lament for a dysfunctional life, could prepare you for his second, a triumphantly dark, comic anti-western; apart, that is, from the same devastating sense of confidence and glittering prose. ...The writing is superb, with each brief chapter a separate tale in itself, relayed in Eli’s aphoristic fashion. The scope is both cinematic and schematic, with a swaggering, poetic feel reminiscent of a Bob Dylan lyric, while the author retains gleefully taut control of the overall structure. ... Pertenece a las series editorialesTiene la adaptaciónPremiosDistincionesListas de sobresalientes
Charlie y Eli Sisters viven en Oregon City y trabajan para el Comodoro, un magnate y quizá aspirante a político que mueve muchos hilos en las sombras y tiene múltiples y variados negocios. Los hermanos, todo hay que decirlo, son sus matones y a veces sus verdugos. Y ahora van rumbo a Sacramento, en California, a cumplir un nuevo trabajo para su jefe, acabar con Hermann Kermit Warm, un buscador de oro. Porque la novela transcurre en 1851, en plena fiebre del oro. No se sabe muy bien en qué río aurífero se encuentra Warm, y el comodoro ha enviado por delante a Morris, el dandy, que también trabaja para él y tiene que averiguar su paradero y seguirlo, para entregárselo a los Sisters. Una novela muy seductora, negra y divertida. Los críticos han comparado a su autor con Cormac McCarthy, pero éste es más bien hijo de Faulkner, mientras que DeWitt es sobrino de Mark Twain y primo hermano de los hermanos Coen, si de parentescos literarios se trata. «DeWitt ha escrito una novela del lejano Oeste que subvierte el género, emocionante, divertidísima e inesperadamente conmovedora» (Publishers Weekly). No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.87)
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The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
2
(edit. promo.)
Pensando que ya el título estaba mal traducido (en plan "Los SimpsonS") me parece que SisterS es el apellido completo de los hermanos del título, así que (sorprendentemente) nada que objetar.
Un estilo muy simple que hace que la historia llegue muy bien y que todo cristo lo compare con McCarthy. Nadie comenta nada de la última vaquerada que han traducido de Doctorow (Cómo todo acabó y volvió a empezar a la que, esta vez sí, le han traducido el título como han querido. Welcome to Hard Times era el original, donde Hard Times era/es el nombre del pueblo donde transcurre la acción).
La cosa es que me ha gustado mucho, sobre todo por como se aprovecha la voz del hermano menor para describirnos la relación entre ellos y la peculiar ética que les rige en todas sus transacciones con el resto de los seres humanos de la novela. (