One of
the biggest things I miss about the closing of Borders was getting Advanced
Reader Copy’s of writers books. Most that came were by new authors, but you
could always count on an oldie but a goodie (such as Stephen King) from time to
time. One book that came in 2011 during the last few months of the companies
existence was The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. It was a darkly comic,
Western-inspired story that takes place in Oregon and California in 1851. The
narrator is Eli Sisters and his brother Charlie are assassins sent to kill
Hermann Kermit Warm who is accused of stealing from the Sisters' fearsome boss,
the Commodore. Was it the Sisters fault that the man turned out to be sort of
likable?
While
the novel, with it’s short chapters and and sparse narrative, sometimes seemed indicate
deWitt was penning a screenplay, the book was wonderfully odd. And then, by
accident, after reading this book, a remainder version of his first book,
Ablutions, came into the store. Of course, as things happen, I’ve yet to pick
up the slim book. It’s somewhere here, but at this writing I’m not so sure
where it is. Life of a bibliphile.
Anyways,
while in Portland working on Something Like Summer, I was surfing through
Powell’s and saw that deWitt’s newest book, Undermajordomo Minor, got released.
So I scored a copy at the library when I got back.
And
while it’s clear that The Sisters Brothers was a Western (well, western themed,
because it really wasn’t about cowboys), Undermajordomo Minor is sort of hard
to categorize into a genre. It could be a literary fantasy book, but I don’t
think it is. It has tinges of English gothic to it, as well. It may, for me who
needs to categorize things, really fairy tale or fable. Well, a fable without a
moral. It is certainly a love story and an adventure story but it’s also an ink-black
comedy of manners.
“Lucien
(Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless
and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling
in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment
assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending
to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many
dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master,
Baron Von Aux? He also encounters the colorful people of the local
village—thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love
he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome soldier, Adolphus. Thus
begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and
cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behavior is laid bare for
our hero to observe.”
Once
again, deWitt employs short chapters that remind me of what screenplay looks
like. But while I don’t find that jarring –it actually propels the story- it
may put people off a bit, especially those more literary readers. The prose,
which may seem light, is filled with many weighty issues. Much like science
fiction writer Joe Haldeman, deWitt is able to give a lot of meaning in short passages.
The humor, dark and often laugh out loud, is brilliantly rendered here.
Sometimes I often felt I was watching an old BBC costume drama, mixed with
Hammer Films spooky castles. The book does take a weird left turn towards the
end, but it’s not out of place in the atmosphere deWitt was trying to create.
But I miss those ARC's because without them, I would have never discovered Patrick deWitt. Now where is that copy of Ablutions?
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