The Usual Desire to Kill

A Novel

De: Camilla Barnes

Narrado por: Harriet Walter

A “droll, psychologically astute…unexpected…very funny” (Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air) and moving portrait of a long-married couple, seen through the eyes of their wickedly observant daughter.

Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of decades-old food.

Miranda’s father is a retired professor of philosophy who never loses an argument. Miranda’s mother likes to bring conversation back to “the War,” although she was born after it ended. Married for fifty years, they are uncommonly set in their ways. Miranda plays the role of translator when she visits, communicating the desires or complaints of one parent to the other and then venting her frustration to her sister and her daughter. At the end of a visit, she reports “the usual desire to kill.”

This wry, propulsive story about an eccentric yet endearing family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"It’s possible that another performer could make this delicious audiobook more fun than Harriet Walter has, but hard to see how. “The usual desire to kill” is the emotion felt by two English sisters who are trying to cope with their aging and blithely infuriating parents who have moved themselves to a ramshackle stone house in rural France. Walter’s astringent delivery is deadpan funny and so skillfully judged that even the occasional llama in the kitchen seems plausible. Barnes, a playwright, gives their actor daughter a marvelously apt subplot involving King Lear, while at home their dotty mother lies about a needed hip replacement and their father tends chickens and pretends he can’t hear his wife. It’s mad fun, but also far more than skin deep."

Brilliant

Crackling dry wit and yet beautifully heartfelt. I loved these flawed, funny people. Lovely reading as well.

Excellent, subtle humor and heartbreaking family dynamics.

Camilla Barnes created such a beautifully layered, comic and heartbreaking family portrait in this novel.

The acceptance of sadness

To me the key point in the action was the grandmother’s statement at the end that in their long marriage she had started out eager but become distant, while her spouse, the grandfather, had started out dutiful but become a bit affectionate and doting - at least toward their children and grandchild. The two at cross purposes apparently the whole while. How lonely, but how British? (Stiff upper lip and all.) - JW

British humor

Some good chuckles. A pleasant diversion and some relatable aspects of aging and dynamics of parent adult to aging parents.

Keep with it.

The prickly characters are sometimes annoying and hard to like. Stick with it, though. You will be moved.