The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes

Reviewed by Anne Smith-Nochasak

“It has to be said, they may be barking mad, but I always come home with some good anecdotes.” (27)

In The Usual Desire to Kill, Camilla Barnes explores the amusing, exasperating, and painful moments that define family with humour and especially empathy. In the novel, Miranda and her sister Charlotte face the complications that arise as their somewhat unusual parents age. Told through Miranda’s narrative, correspondence between Miranda and Charlotte, short dramatic scenes between the mother and the father, and the “Kitty” letters of the mother, we receive a complex image of what constitutes this family.

Years ago, shortly after Miranda left England to pursue a career in theatre in Paris, her parents abruptly relocated to rural France. Her father, a retired philosophy professor, and her mother, once a student at Oxford, now have a small, cluttered property in the countryside, where they maintain a garden and assorted livestock, including two llamas. Miranda, close to fifty in the present, travels down from Paris regularly to visit and assist them, occasionally accompanied by her adult daughter, while Charlotte oversees the situation from her home in England. In her emails, Miranda regales Charlotte with anecdotes of her parents’ attitudes, actions, and conversations. Although each story is reported with humour, we sense this is Miranda’s way of processing her exasperation after a visit.

In the present, the mother is scheduled for hip surgery. When Charlotte comes over from England, the relationship between the sisters, sometimes strained but typically cordial in their email correspondence, takes on a new perspective. The rivalry between the two sisters rises to the surface, as Charlotte rages at the way Miranda has always been favoured. Miranda, meanwhile, feels they were “equally scorned.”

There is a sweet, sad selfishness about their father. His quiet amusement at his wife’s words, moods, and actions does not reveal affection, yet we feel a little sorry for him. He longs to go to Paris to see his daughter in the King Lear that she has adapted and translated into French, witnessing his disappointment when the plan falls through. His wife, meanwhile, does not take pride in her daughter’s accomplishments, returning her creative writing without praise, her only comment being that she corrected the spelling errors. There are few demonstrations of affection between them or with their daughters, yet somehow, it is hard to imagine them without each other.

The mother’s letters to Kitty reveal the evolution of her personality. At first, we have the enthusiasm of an Oxford student, on her own for the first time, with specific expectations of life and all she encounters. She shares her aspirations and disappointments in letters to Kitty, an experienced older sister figure. The initial letters might seem chatty and insignificant to the plot, but little by little, they begin to reveal the hurts and disappointments this woman faced. Her dreams of the Riviera and America with her American companion fade and she marries a mild-mannered and unromantic philosophy student. She is alone when she goes into labour and is basically shunned by the hospital. When the child is stillborn, she is told not to disturb the mothers who need their rest because they have babies to care for. She is isolated, uncared for, and deep in unshared grief. We witness a once eager young woman being reshaped by painful circumstances; there is a sense of deepening loneliness as her life is increasingly hemmed in by duty.

Conversations between the parents are disconnected at best. The mother focuses on her husband’s lack of hearing, understanding, and caring, while the father muses more on the structure of her statements than their meaning. The father is aloof, a little amused by all his wife’s words, and although we can sympathize with him because she is critical of him, we also realize that it is hard to be affectionate in a vacuum. There is little warmth or communication, and although the repartee is fun to follow, it must be difficult to live. The scenes involving the parents inserted in the narrative reinforce this lack of warmth, giving a sense of Paul Simon’s The Dangling Conversation.

We are left with a sense of a family who on one level is a little eccentric and unusual, but on another so typical of family. In all the disappointments, the breakdowns in communication, and comedic misunderstandings, at the end of the day they are together. Their loyalty to one another is strained to the limits, and yet it remains. They remain.

Their story is, in essence, a dramatic presentation. Early in the narrative, Miranda observes:

“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 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.” (22)

This sense is reinforced through short dramatic scenes throughout the text, and in the concluding passages of the epilogue: As the cast leaves the empty stage, they descend into melancholy, for the play that has filled all their moments is now over, while outside, the audience is already moving on—getting in their cars, chatting about other things.

So it is with life.

The Usual Desire to Kill is a story that amuses us and haunts us, that makes us laugh but moves us to cherish and miss the characters a little when the story is done. Through Camilla Barnes’s rich and varied narrative, we are led to reflect, not only on the characters of this novel, but on who we are and where we are going.

About the Author

Camilla Barnes was born and brought up in England but moved to France in her twenties. She lives in Paris and works in theatre, doing every job possible there except act. She writes for the stage in both English and French. The Usual Desire to Kill is her first novel.

About the Reviewer

Anne M. Smith-Nochasak grew up in rural western Nova Scotia, where she currently teaches part-time after years in northern communities. She has self-published four novels with Friesen Press: A Canoer of Shorelines (2021), The Ice Widow (2022), and two books in the Taggak Journey trilogy: River Faces North (2024) and River Becomes Shadow (2025). A member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, Anne enjoys incorporating local settings into her writing. In her spare time, she likes reading, kayaking, gardening, renovating, and exploring the woods with her golden dog, Shay, while her cat, Kit Marlowe, oversees the house. Anne can be contacted through her website. https://www.acanoerofshorelines.com/

Book Details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 1 2025

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1668062836

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1668062838