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The Usual Desire to Kill

A Novel

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The Usual Desire to Kill

Auteur(s): Camilla Barnes
Narrateur(s): Harriet Walter
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À propos de cet audio

 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. Fiction de genre Fiction littéraire Le choix des éditeurs Spirituel Drôle

Ce que les critiques en disent

"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."

Editorial Review

For anyone who's ever been on either side of an "OK, boomer" eye roll?
At its start, Camilla Barnes's debut novel of a family absolutely riddled with generation gaps seems almost like a cosy comedy of errors, enhanced with instantly iconic narration. As expected, Harriet Walter's performance is outstanding and so very British, infusing an air of "Oh, you mustn't bother" and "Don't be so silly" into every breath. But as you move through the story, you realise that Barnes's storytelling style and structure—clearly informed by her career in the theatre—challenges the conventional expectation that family dramas will culminate in a cathartic revelation of truth, any moldering shame sanitised with a cleansing dose of sunny truths. As with most families, there are a lot of past hurts buried here, and the relative positions of each player prevents them from seeing each other—and their history—clearly. But you as the listener are in for a revelatory experience of feeling deep sympathy and love for each and every one of them. —Emily C., Audible Editor

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