Set in a dilapidated old French country manor, The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes is a quietly dazzling, sharp-witted generational drama featuring the family of an aging couple from Oxford, England, long settled in rural France. As families go, this one has more than its fair share of quirky personalities, which makes for a delightful story. Narrating it all is their daughter Miranda, a theater actress in Paris whose visits home leave her utterly exasperated.
Barnes is a British-French stage writer with a flair for superb dialogue and bitingly clever insight into the baggage-laden relationship between almost-50 Miranda, her sister, Charlotte, and their Mum and Dad. The parents, spectacularly ill-matched, spend much of their time talking at cross purposes. Human relationships are tricky for Dad; he much prefers animals, so Miranda's visits invariably involve serving as translator and umpire between her parents. Yet no matter the state of Mum's bad hip or whether Dad has his hearing aids in, they are always up for a game of tennis and are united in their fondness for wine and pudding.
Meanwhile, the siblings must contend with the nagging rivalries that pursued them into adulthood and their parents' "insanely irritating" idiosyncrasies. They are also determined to uncover a potentially scandalous incident concerning Dad's flamboyant American friend Barbara. The cast is rounded out by the Miranda's daughter, Alice, and various animals who play supporting roles in the daily life of Miranda's parents. The erratically furnished family residence, La Forgerie, houses two llamas, ducks, chickens, and a pair of entitled cats who dine alongside their masters in theatrically grand formality every evening.
The novel's structure marks an entertaining departure from convention. Sprinkled in between e-mails from Miranda to Charlotte venting about her trips to La Forgerie are scenes that take the form of a play and old letters Mum started writing when she was an undergraduate student at Oxford. Miranda's mother is clearly the star of Barnes's debut, an intelligent matriarch with thwarted ambitions who doesn't let logic, reality, or her husband's maddeningly circular philosophical arguments get in the way of her agenda. And once Mum's guard is down with the help of post-surgery wooziness, her secrets come tumbling out, each revelation a missing piece of the puzzle that is Miranda and Charlotte's mother.
Relishing this quintessentially English domestic comedy, readers peeking below the surface will be astonished by the complex generational and emotional undercurrents guiding Barnes's memorable characters. --Shahina Piyarali
Shelf Talker: A quick-witted, quintessentially English domestic comedy drama set in an old manor in rural France explores the baggage-laden relationship between two sisters and their elderly parents.