A Man Called Ove: A Novel Audiobook by Fredrik Backman

Why the audiobook wins

J. K. Simmons narrating a grieving, furious old man is not the casting you'd expect, and that's exactly why it works. He plays Ove's rage as genuinely funny rather than cartoonish, then drops the register without warning for the scenes that gut you, so the tonal whiplash lands the way Backman wrote it on the page, except now you're hearing an Oscar winner control that whiplash with his voice.

The book's whole trick is training you to expect a joke and delivering a gut-punch instead, and audio narration is uniquely suited to that kind of misdirection: Simmons can let a pause do the work a paragraph break does in print. It's an ideal long-drive listen, the kind where you'll want the extra minute at the end of the trip to sit with how it lands.

Simmons was a finalist for this performance at the Audies, proof the industry noticed what listeners already knew. Nine-plus hours, one credit, and a narrator who earns every laugh and every tear.