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A review by katheastman
No Good Brother by Tyler Keevil
4.0
No Good Brother gets off to a leisurely start as we see the boat Tim crews on winding down after the herring season. You get a real sense of how important this boat is to the family business which operates it and how the crew works together like a family, whether they’re related by blood or not. Tim’s made himself invaluable as a crew member and is being coaxed into becoming a more permanent part of the actual family at the heart of it.
Which is when his younger brother, Jake, turns up and things take a detour out to sea and across the border… It’s easy to see Jake as the No Good Brother of the title but once Tim has (admittedly reluctantly) agreed to help his brother and they get underway, he often seems the more incorrigible of the two and the one that’s driving the action forward, making it harder to turn back and attempt any form of reparation or escape the almost certain punishment or worse that awaits them. They are despite their differences, both as bad as each other which is perhaps what’s meant by No Good Brother.
Even without knowing about their past shared sorrow, I think I would have championed this pair of scoundrels though. I couldn’t help but warm to them: I laughed at each madcap episode, while also willing them to get away with it. Especially when they come up against more sinister forces in the book. This is no doubt helped by spending time with them as well as what they find once they cross the border, and how they react to it. And a hat tip here to Tyler Keevil’s fresh take on the rescuer on a white horse trope.
If you enjoyed Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, I think you’ll like No Good Brother. It feels like a good buddy road trip movie in book form except they’re brothers, most of the time they’re at sea in a boat and, even when they are on land, their transport is more off-road than on. No Good Brother is a wonderful, wild ride of a read: packed full of emotion and brotherly love, moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity alongside those of real danger. Loved it.
Which is when his younger brother, Jake, turns up and things take a detour out to sea and across the border… It’s easy to see Jake as the No Good Brother of the title but once Tim has (admittedly reluctantly) agreed to help his brother and they get underway, he often seems the more incorrigible of the two and the one that’s driving the action forward, making it harder to turn back and attempt any form of reparation or escape the almost certain punishment or worse that awaits them. They are despite their differences, both as bad as each other which is perhaps what’s meant by No Good Brother.
Even without knowing about their past shared sorrow, I think I would have championed this pair of scoundrels though. I couldn’t help but warm to them: I laughed at each madcap episode, while also willing them to get away with it. Especially when they come up against more sinister forces in the book. This is no doubt helped by spending time with them as well as what they find once they cross the border, and how they react to it. And a hat tip here to Tyler Keevil’s fresh take on the rescuer on a white horse trope.
If you enjoyed Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, I think you’ll like No Good Brother. It feels like a good buddy road trip movie in book form except they’re brothers, most of the time they’re at sea in a boat and, even when they are on land, their transport is more off-road than on. No Good Brother is a wonderful, wild ride of a read: packed full of emotion and brotherly love, moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity alongside those of real danger. Loved it.