The Usual Desire to Kill
A Novel
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The Usual Desire to Kill
Narrated by:
Harriet Walter
Buy Now for £10.79
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Narrated by:
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Harriet Walter
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By:
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Camilla Barnes
About this listen
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.
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."
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