The Usual Desire to Kill
-
-
3.6 • 8 Ratings
-
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
‘Hilarious and heartbreaking’ MONICA ALI
'Deeply funny and knowing' MEG WOLITZER
'Witty, moving' ANN NAPOLITANO
'Poignant, funny and brilliantly told' POSY SIMMONDS
An often hilarious, surprisingly moving portrait of a long-married couple, seen through the eyes of their wickedly observant daughter – for fans of A Man Called Ove and The Royal Tenenbaums.
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 food dating back to 1983.
Miranda’s father is a retired professor of philosophy who never loses an argument. Her 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.
A wry, propulsive, exquisitely observed story of a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them. This is an extraordinary debut novel from a seasoned playwright with a flare for dialogue and, in the end, immense empathy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
‘Hilarious and heartbreaking. Barnes’s dialogue is pitch-perfect, and her characters dance off the page and straight into your heart’ Monica Ali, author of Love Marriage
‘Camilla Barnes deftly deciphers the secret language of one family, often with deeply funny and knowing results. I loved spending time in the very specific, complicated and memorable world of this novel’ Meg Wolitzer, author of The Wife
‘I love nothing more than reading about eccentric families, and the family in The Usual Desire to Kill is just that. Miranda and her sister work to uncover the true story of their parents' marriage, only to have their brilliant, quirky mother and father deflect them at every turn. Barnes has written a witty, moving novel about characters who, even when they seem incapable of speaking honestly, are worth listening to nonetheless’ Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful
‘An account of two ageing, secretive, disputatious and thoroughly maddening parents – poignant, funny and brilliantly told through gritted teeth’ Posy Simmonds, author of Cassandra Darke
EARLY READERS' REVIEWS FOR THE USUAL DESIRE TO KILL:
‘Family saga at its very best told with a tenderness that matches the dark humour in equal parts. I think this a book a lot of people will identify with’
‘Hugely relatable. Endearingly flawed characters with real depth and an insightful understanding of the ways in which family dynamics play out’
‘A unique yet weirdly relatable family saga’
‘Funny, honest, and engaging’
‘An observant and darkly witty debut’
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Playwright Barnes combines humor with pathos in her heart-wrenching debut, the story of an aging British couple's unhappy marriage told mainly from the perspective of their actor daughter. Miranda's parents were born during WWII and have been together since their student days at Oxford. Dad, a retired philosophy professor, now tends to llamas, chickens, and cats at their rundown manor house in central France, where he and Mum, who got pregnant before she could finish her studies, moved after raising Miranda and her older sister, Charlotte, in England. The parents' endless stream of bickering, "a game of stubbornness versus pedantry," is witnessed most often by Miranda, now pushing 50, who visits regularly from Paris. She relates their bitter and witty exchanges in emails to Charlotte and in scripts, which comprise the text of the novel along with Miranda's narration and Mum's old letters. Miranda and Charlotte think they know their parents all too well, but the genius of the novel lies in the ways Barnes highlights how parents can never be fully known to their children, no matter how observant their children are. In Mum's letters to her sister, for example, she reveals an affair with an American traveler during her Oxford days, the outcome of which helps to explain her acerbic nature, while Dad shares a secret of his own with Miranda's daughter, Alice, in the form of a poignant philosophical conundrum. It's an unforgettable story about the limits of judging others.
Customer Reviews
Laugh out loud funny
Loved it. A wonderfully humorous read that was deeply human and moving at times. Especially relatable for the current sandwich generation of Gen X’s whose parental antics are the cause of endless frustration and amusement in equal parts.