Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad. Told in deWitt's darkly comic and arresting style, THE WARM JOB is the kind of Western the Coen Brothers might write - stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel ABLUTIONS, THE WARM JOB is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work. It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction, which shows an exciting expansion of Dewitt's range
I have really mixed feelings about this book. There is currently a huge amount of buzz about it since it’s just been short-listed for the Man Booker prize, but it really didn’t speak to me. It’s unfortunate, because a childhood of watching John Wayne movies with my great-grandmother has given me a soft spot for westerns.
The strength of the book is in the narrator. Eli Sisters has an unusual voice: somewhat deadpan, with glimpses of eloquence. He’s a conflicted character. While his brother Charlie is a killer through and through, Eli has a conscience that rears its ugly head from time to time. He has a soft spot for his injured horse (whose plight made me awfully sad), but can shoot a man without a second thought.
If it wasn’t so violent, this book could be considered a comedy of errors. For me, it was less about their journey and more about how they reacted when things went wrong.
I wish I could say I liked the book more. Despite the compelling narrator, I had a hard time liking any of the characters. I could *almost* like Eli, but there was still something missing. Something to make him human. Also, despite having extremely short chapters (2-3 pages in most cases), it was a very slow read. It took me a couple of weeks to get through the book. I just wasn’t excited to pick it up at night.
