The Usual Desire to Kill Audiobook By Camilla Barnes cover art

The Usual Desire to Kill

A Novel

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The Usual Desire to Kill

By: Camilla Barnes
Narrated by: Harriet Walter
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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.

©2025 Camilla Barnes (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio Editors Select Family Life Genre Fiction Small Town & Rural Funny Witty

Critic reviews

"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." —AudioFile Magazine

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 cozy 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 realize that Barnes's storytelling style and structure—clearly informed by her career in the theater—challenges the conventional expectation that family dramas will culminate in a cathartic revelation of truth, any moldering shame sanitized 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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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

The acceptance of sadness

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

Brilliant

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

Keep with it.

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

Excellent, subtle humor and heartbreaking family dynamics.

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I was a fly on the wall. More from Camilla Barnes and Harriet Walters, please.

I.iced it.

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This is a boring, depressing book about nothing. There are three voices in the book (none very likable) but only one narrator, so it can be confusing, not that it matters anyway. I’m pretty easy to please but can’t imagine how it ever got published. Would recommend avoiding.

About my worst listen in years

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