The Sisters Brothers Audiobook by Patrick deWitt

Why the audiobook wins

The whole comedy of this novel lives in Eli Sisters' voice, fussy, earnest, and strangely gentle for a man riding toward a murder, and narrator John Pruden gets the deadpan exactly right. He never plays Eli's worry or his tenderness for a cheap laugh; he lets the absurdity of a hired killer fretting over his diet and his horse land on its own, which is funnier and sadder than any broader reading would be.

Audio suits a picaresque like this one, episode after episode of strangers, saloons, and bad luck along the Gold Rush trail, because Pruden's steady, unhurried pace mirrors the horseback rhythm of the story itself. At just under eight hours, it's a brisk enough listen for a weekend of chores or a long drive south, the same direction Eli and Charlie are headed.

DeWitt's prose is spare and this narration honors that restraint rather than fighting it, letting silence and understatement do the heavy lifting. One credit buys you the whole strange, tender ride to San Francisco.