The Sisters Brothers
by Patrick deWitt
Narrated by John Pruden
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
Two professional killers bickering their way across Gold Rush America shouldn't be funny — but somehow John Pruden makes you root for both of them.
- Great if you want: dark literary Westerns with unexpected humor and genuine heart
- Listening experience: deadpan and unhurried, punctuated by sudden jolts of violence
- Narration: Pruden nails Eli's dry, weary tone — the voice of a killer second-guessing himself
- Skip if: you want a straightforward Western or tidy resolution
About This Audiobook
Eli and Charlie Sisters are professional killers on the road from Oregon to California in 1851, hired to find and murder a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. What begins as a straightforward assignment accumulates moral and physical wreckage as the brothers encounter gold fever, despair, and the unexpected possibility that Warm might be worth protecting rather than killing. Patrick deWitt's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel is a darkly funny Western that uses the genre's bones to examine brotherhood, violence, and the question of whether people can change.
John Pruden's narration finds the perfect register for a story that is simultaneously brutal and tender, delivering Eli's wry, melancholy voice with the patience the character requires. His reading of the novel's stranger episodes, and there are many, never tips into self-consciousness, keeping the story grounded in the emotional reality of two brothers trying to survive each other. At just over seven hours, The Sisters Brothers is a distinctive and memorable audiobook.
