I’m not sure if this story has a point. I can’t seem to find the plot. The characters aren’t developed, and what I know of them isn’t likable. I’m not connecting with the writing style at all.

DNF

*Thanks to Scribner for the free copy.*

A creative take on marriage from the perspective of a "wildly observant" daughter, the main character, Miranda. I enjoyed the dynamics between the parents and how we as readers slowly learned the depth of their eccentricities over time via various mediums. That being said, this is more of a vibes book than one with any plot - so if you're looking for an intricate story, you won't find it. For those who love character studies, this will be delicious to read.

This was a kind of fun and reasonably relatable slice of life type of book. I liked how realistic the characters and everything felt. It wasn't the most exciting book and I found myself skimming at times, but there was definitely a lot of humor and heart in this one.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

The Usual Desire to Kill was a super interesting read. I loved the character study and the writing felt propulsive. I'd read more from the author.

The Usual Desire to Kill is a multi generational story of a British family told primarily from the viewpoint of the daughter staying with her eccentric parents in rural France. Her narrative is interwoven with letters from her mother's past. There's many moments of laughter and some sadness - like any family story. It is warm in parts, and painful in others. While I don't know if it's a book that will stick with me, it was a pleasure to read and one I left with a sense of satisfaction when I finished the last page.

Recommended for those who enjoy a lighter multi-faceted family story with mixed media elements. Thank you Scribner for the early copy!

This one was definitely quirky and different. If you like family-centered stories with a unique narrative voice, then you'll want to pick this one up! It's one you have to go in blind and just go with the flow as it unfolds.

Published by Scribner on April 1, 2025

The Usual Desire to Kill is a domestic comedy with five characters: Mum and Dad, their daughters Miranda and Charlotte, and Miranda’s daughter Alice. The story is told in a variety of styles. A series of letters from the mid-1960s explain how Mum and Dad came to meet and marry. Emails exchanged by the daughters in 2019 share their exasperation with their parents. Snatches of life are dramatized as scenes from a play. Parts of the story are narrated by Miranda, although Charlotte occasionally finds her voice. The scripted scenes add little to the story, but the storytelling techniques are mixed with a director’s desire to keep the story moving.

In a series of letters from 1963, “Your Loving Sister” tells Kitty about her dating life, including unsatisfactory sex with DK (for Dog Killer) and no sex with a more appealing American named Looey. YLS gets pregnant by DK and marries him, not because he wants her baby or even because he wants her, but because he has a sense of duty. As YLS relates, “I didn’t love him, but we did have a sort of understanding. I thought we would grow into each other.” They adapted to married life because “he changed all on his own — he mellowed; he taught himself how to pretend, how to deal with other people. He has learned to act.”

DK agrees that he has learned to act. During his marriage to YLS, DK internalized the lesson that all married men joke about: the secret to a happy marriage is to tell your wife that she’s right about everything. Later in life, DK will say that he used to hate liver. What he means is that YLS served him liver while assuring him that he likes it and, for the sake of marital harmony, he agreed with her. “Wives dominate while husbands submit” seems to be the theme of their marriage until the reader discovers that DK finds subversive ways to maintain his independence.

The story begins in France, where Mum and Dad have lived for the last thirty of their fifty married years. In France, nobody ever refers to Mum and Dad by their actual names, a choice that reflects the way they have cemented themselves into familial roles. Miranda describes her Dad as “a retired philosophy professor who never loses an argument.” Dad describes philosophy as “a mix of pedantry and common sense.” He challenges his family with amusing pedantry throughout the novel, but he also offers good advice to Miranda about dealing with her mother and with her own future.

Miranda’s description of her childhood captures her parents and their marriage:

“Over the years they had evolved a well-rehearsed technique for living together. It was a two-hander play, but there was also a bit part for me. Like two pieces of a broken plate that didn’t in fact fit together and never had, they used me not as glue but more as a translator; I often found myself communicating the desires or complaints of one to the other.”

Dad often fails to turn on his hearing aids, the better to ignore Mum’s opinions, advice, and instructions. He seems more comfortable communicating with the ducks and llamas on their property. “He didn’t interfere in their lives, in the same way he didn’t interfere in his daughters’ lives. He was just not very good at being interested in other living creatures, particularly if they only had two legs.”

Miranda and Charlotte endure their aging parents for short periods. Miranda is nearly fifty and Charlotte has passed that landmark. Their visits are more than obligatory — the women want to keep in touch with their parents — but they are always stressful. Mum has strong opinions about placing knives in the dishwasher.

Mum needs hip surgery but she doesn’t want to talk about it. “Not that she complains; she doesn’t. It’s more like spectator martyrdom— moving in a certain way to make sure that I notice and feel sorry for her and then, if I ask, denying that there is anything wrong and doing sod all about it.”

If Mum spends a few days in the hospital, perhaps Dad can unwind. And perhaps the daughters can use the time to get to the bottom of an event in their childhood that they never understood. The true identity of “Kitty” is another of the story’s surprising reveals.

The hidden family secret is tame by modern American standards. I suppose things were different in England a few decades ago. In any event, the novel doesn’t position the reveal of the family secret as the story’s climax. It’s just one of several moments that merit a soft chuckle. I’m a bit weary of sedate family comedies, but Barnes’ pointed prose made me chuckle so often that I have to recommend The Usual Desire to Kill.

RECOMMENDED

I definitely see the comparison to A Man Called Ove with the dry humor and quirky loveable characters that have the ability to simultaneously drive you bonkers and tug at your heartstrings.

Highly character driven, told in emails between the two daughters commiserating about their aging parents, and in letters their mother wrote in the 1960s, the reader is a fly on the wall to these snapshots of life through the years.

Wholly relatable, about family in all its eccentricities and dysfunctions, highlighting the shifting of roles we play to one another.
There are old family wounds that are collectively carried, memories cherished, as well as the everyday bickering and arguing philosophy among llamas.

“After more than fifty years of marriage, they were set in their ways…It was a game of stubbornness versus pedantry, and it was pointless trying to intervene.”

This is a sometimes funny look at a long marriage and the children and grandchildren it produced. The parents are both eccentric and loveless. Interspersed are letters describing how the parents met and married.

Thank you so much to Scribner Books for the complimentary copy of this book!

Sigh. I wanted to like this one. I fear this is more of it's not you, it's me.

I just was not really sure the point of the book? Perhaps I was not the right audience for it which is why it was so hard for me to enjoy.
It sadly was not memorable for me. I know there will be others who love this. I was waiting for more to happen but then nothing did.

I will say as my parents are getting older and have been empty nesters for quite sometime now. WIth my father recently retired, the tension between my mother and him are sky high. So I could really relate to hearing the mom and dad in this bicker back and forth because I know that will be them in the near future.

There was a paragraph that I felt was very poignant:
"When you're little, you're dependent on your parents. But as you grow up, the fear creeps in that at some point they will become dependent on you. Twenty years of looking after your own children, and then just as they finally left home and you can do what you want, your parents start to fall apart. It would be nice to have a few years of freedom in between the two. A few years of not caring. Not caring, and not caring. For others."

I feel bad for rating this book so low but I just felt lost while consuming it.

2.5

You know that feeling you get that you want to ring someone's neck at a family function, or after spending the day with your parents? If so, you will totally connect with this story. It's filled with relatable, quirky characters and deals with topics that many middle aged people contend with, such as aging parents, lack luster careers and sibling rivalries. The message that even the weirdest of families are still filled with love for one another was endearing and Barnes writing style had me laughing out loud.

Oh, did I love this book. It's a book for people of all ages, especially the adult daughters of parents whose quirkiness, interpersonal dynamics, and terse dialogue (the kind that develops over the course of a long marriage) are the source of humor and frustration and curiosity. So much happens in this relatively short book that takes place primarily in Miranda's parents' isolated home. Miranda and occasionally her daughter visit; the other sister for the most part maintains her distance but gets regular email updates about the goings-on in the house, as the aging parents provide endless fodder for sibling amusement. And, there are llamas. And a backstory about how the parents met. And, an "incident" in the parents' marriage that no one talks about. And so much more. A great read by a debut author who has spent much of her adult life as a playwright in France. Go buy this now. You won't regret it.

THE USUAL DESIRE TO KILL by Camilla Barnes is a most unusual book, but one that I suspect many will connect with. Telling most of the story is Miranda, a working actress in Paris, who makes monthly treks to the countryside to check on her aging parents, an eccentric pair married for over 50 years. They left the world of academia in Oxford many years ago and have spent most of their time since caring for llamas, ducks, chickens, and gardens, while following strict routines at their rural French home. Amidst all that, they’re constantly sniping at each other.⁣
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Miranda regularly reports back to her sister who still lives in England. Via email, the two commiserate about their parents and brainstorm plans on what needs to be done. As with most aging parents, theirs don’t think they need help, adding to their daughters’ frustrations. After a particularly tough visit, all the craziness in their home leads Miranda to confess that she was left with “the usual desire to kill.” I think many of us can relate! ⁣
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While there wasn’t a whole lot of action in this story, the dialogues were always snappy and the characters charming. At times it was a bit out there, but it moved quickly and the personalities of the parents kept the story’s surface fun and full of humor, even as a deeper layer was actually a bit sad. As I said at the start, this was a most unusual book. One I’m glad I read. ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫✨

This book started off extremely promising but slowly got worse until by the end it was almost impossible to finish.

What an absolute gem this weird, hilarious, and wryly observant novel turned out to be!

If you’re needing something a little lighter right now (aren’t we all?) that is still whip smart and clever, this is the book for you. It’s a delightful romp through the history of a quirky family told mostly from the perspective of an adult daughter who sums up time spent with her bickering, finicky parents in a message to her sister as “the usual desire to kill.”

I love books that are strongly written and structured that center on something extraordinarily low stakes, making for an intellectually demanding but low-stress reader experience. The wacky cast of characters is universally lovable if exasperating in the most hilarious ways, and I greatly enjoyed spending time with them.

This was humorous, for the most part. This was a family that drove each other crazy. It told the story of two generations through the use of letters. Miranda lived in France, was an actress and felt that she needed to go home on her days off to help her parents. After each visit, she would write a letter to her sister about the ways her mother and dad interact, which always ended in the usual desire to kill them. I found it to be a great character driven book that kept me very much entertained. Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the complementary digital ARC. This review is my own opinion.

No matter how well we think we know someone the truth is: we don't.

There's a strange family dynamic at play here - two adult sisters, their parents, and their own children. The parents followed one daughter, our main perspective Miranda, when she moved to France and bought a dilapidated house with a lot of land and various animals. The elder sister, Charlotte, stayed in England and went on with her life. The parents don't seem to actually like each other but there isn't open animosity either. Their life in France is a strange, semi-functional absurdity.

Throughout the course of the novel we see the adult relationship between Miranda and Charlotte, their concerns for their parents and themselves, Miranda's daughter's close relationship with her grandfather, and how Miranda and Charlotte navigate their parents aging. We also get quiet revelations about their parents relationship before them with excerpts of letters, and by the end find out that there is a secret that is the backbone to the present that neither sister knows.

It's a mix of silly and sad, and full of love. A quick and thoughtful read.

Great cover but the story was kind of lacking for me. It was trying to be reflective about family, marriage, sisterhood, motherhood, but it kind of dragged along and didn't say anything new or delved deeper into these issues.

The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This read was a real treat. Nothing extraordinary happened in this book; I’d argue there was no real plot. But the magic of this one was in the ordinary. It was honest and humorous and highly relatable. The characters were distinct and full of their own flaws, but endearing. There was much wisdom tucked in these pages.

Readers looking for a read that ponders the mundanity of life and family and provides a slow down for all the hustle and bustle will enjoy this one.

An incredibly unique and enthralling family story that had me hooked from page one. These characters are going to stick with me for a long time.