Jan Kirkpatrick is the Winner of our October Find-Book Review Competition

01 November 2011

Congratulations and a £50 Amazon voucher go to Jan Kirkpatrick for an excellent review of The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt.

 

This, the second novel by the Canadian writer was short listed for the Mann Booker Prize 2011. It is a compelling, darkly humorous tale with tight deadpan dialogue and superb characters. There is violence and descriptions of excruciating cruelty and it is not for the fainthearted.  De Witt's,  first, critically acclaimed, novel Ablutions was published in 2009.

 

Here is a short extract from Jan's winning review:

 

 

While The Sisters Brothers might sound like a standard Western, Patrick deWitt's darkly comic and arresting writing style elevates it above the majority of genre stories. It is certainly an exciting and passionate story of the Wild West, but it also malevolent, unsettling and incredibly revealing as to the perversity of human motivation. It really is a testimony to deWitt's writing skills that he manages to make seemingly merciless psychopaths like Eli and Charlie Sisters seem sympathetic. Given the nature of the brothers' profession as well as the people they encounter on their travels, it should be no surprise that there is a lot of violence in this book. However, while the violence can sometimes be extreme, it is always necessary to the plot and is often, in fact, softened by deWitt's excellent black humour.

 

 

We would like to thank everyone who submitted reviews this month, especially:
Claire Milne-Smith for her review of Cracking India
Mike Kenny for Holy Terror
John Freeman for Find Your Power
If you only thought about entering our October review competition don't miss the chance of winning a £50 voucher in our November competition. Choose a book, write your review and get it to us by 30th November and Good Luck.
Some of the books reviewed by recent Find-Book review competition winners

The Sisters Brothers

Patrick deWitt (Paperback)
From:£17.53

The Sound and the Fury (Vintage Classics)

William Faulkner (Paperback)
From:£6.79

The New York Trilogy: "City of Glass", "Ghosts" and "Locked Room"

Paul Auster (Paperback)
From:£10.78

The Act of Roger Murgatroyd: An Entertainment (Evadne Mount Trilogy)

Gilbert Adair (Paperback)
From:£7.99

The Hunger Games (Hunger Games Trilogy)

Suzanne Collins (Paperback)
From:£5.99

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Oxford World's Classics)

Edwin A. Abbott (Paperback)
From:£6.29