The Usual Desire to Kill Camilla Barnes Scribner, 2025
The Usual Desire to Kill is billed as a comedy, but the relationships at its core are all characterised by a great deal of sadness, especially when it comes to lost opportunities, misunderstandings and poor communication.
The protagonist, Miranda, is an actor and writer living in France with her teenage daughter, who is currently performing the role of the Fool in a translated version of King Lear. Miranda did the translating and takes pride in both the translation and her daughter’s performance.
However, the Fool’s role of speaking truth to power does not extend to Miranda’s family life. Her relationships with her elderly parents, especially with her difficult mother, must be handled with utmost delicacy. Despite their long marriage, the relationship between her parents is also marked by wilful misunderstandings, occasional treachery and grudging indulgence.
The novel is told from multiple perspectives, offering insight into the personalities and viewpoints of characters who are sometimes hard for Miranda and her sister Charlotte to understand. Through diary entries written by their much younger mother to an imaginary sister, we learn of her loneliness and sadness following the loss of an infant – a tragedy that haunts the family for the rest of their lives.
Another pivotal moment in the family’s history, known as “The Incident”, centres around a misunderstanding with a visiting American academic. Though this event occurred years ago, it highlights the father’s inability to navigate emotional situations, leaving a lingering resentment in his wife – a resentment he remains powerless to resolve, even decades later.
The Usual Desire to Kill is a highly engaging and entertaining novel that explores the complex and often misunderstood dynamics within families, and how we all cope with the profound intimacy of these relationships.
