We detect a strange yearning for what some might see as a simpler time and place — the Wild West of mid-1800s America. In cinema-film after cinema-film and book after book, whiskey-drinking, leather-clad, tough, grizzled men ride horses and spit and swear as though this were some vital clue to our existence on this earth.

The Sisters Brothers follows in this tradition, and like many recent examples of the genre, purports to be literary. And the piles of cash and trophies shoved in its direction — notably the Writers Trust prize of $25,000 and the Governor General’s Award for the same amount — only serve, we suspect, to enhance that reputation of literariness.

And yet we disagree that it is a great novel; we would only for the sake of the general peace let lie the suggestion that it is a good novel. It is in fact a tedious attempt to take some hard-ridden and lame literary pretensions — did you not know? genre is literary, now — and prod it a few more miles down the dusty trail.

The Sisters Brothers‘s principal innovation appears to be that it describes horrid, brutal acts in a detached manner; other reviewers characterize this — wrongly — as “darkly comic”. One might, in fact, object that undergraduates by the score, upon first reading Hemingway or some other modernist, attempt the same; we would only add that their attempts are probably more entertaining.

There is a relationship between the two brothers (did we fail to mention the joke? two brothers, travelling together, with the surname Sisters — ha! ha!) that has its difficulties, too mundane and trivial to speak of. And there is a horse that suffers a number of serious injuries, least of which, but still estimable, is its unfortunate captivity in the midst of tedious, clipped, and supposedly clever conversation.

We would not recommend The Sisters Brothers, unless the reader has two or three spare hours and a need to know of the thoughts of a man introduced to tooth-brushing for the first time.